CUBA INSIGHT

The Cuban Studies Institute Publications

Joaquín Agüero y Agüero (1816-1851)

A Camagüey-born revolutionary, he lived and studied in Havana until his father fell ill and he had to return to run the family business.  Early in life he showed his liberal ideas by founding a free school for the poor in Guáimaro and freeing his slaves.  This led the authorities to place him under surveillance.  Nevertheless, he became president of the abolitionists’ Liberation Society in Camagüey, and worked closely with exiles in New York, building a clandestine printing shop to publish their literature.  These efforts were too premature to be successful and he was arrested, along with his co-conspirators Miguel Benavides, José Tomás Betancourt, and Fernando Zayas.  When sympathizers poisoned the public hangman in Punta de Ganado to gain time to plot a prison break, the authorities substituted a firing squad the following day, August 12th.

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