January 1895 dealt a devastating blow to José Martí: Spanish spies in collusion with the American police had seized an arms shipment and several ships in the Port of Fernandina, in Florida, destined to start the Necessary.
War in Cuba, which thwarted years of preparations and Martí’s efforts to collect tons of ammunition and weapons to that end.
Spain hailed the news as the definitive blow to the plans of the patriots, and in Havana the fundamentalist circles celebrated in style and launched a campaign informing that the U.S. authorities had helped with the seizure of the military supplies. However, their enthusiasm didn’t last long.
Eyewitnesses report that Martí was quite distressed when he heard the news and insisted that it had not been his fault. As it turned out, Colonel López Queralta, who was involved in the preparations, had slipped up and revealed the secret to Spanish espionage and the U.S.
Nonetheless, the events would have very different consequences from those expected by Madrid, since the great magnitude of the seized supplies and the participation of hundreds of patriots in the plans for the shipments aroused great enthusiasm and proved to the Cubans that the path devised by Martí for the new war with the foundation of the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PCR) was the only possible way to achieve independence.
Martí knew how to make the most of the situation and ratified the decision to continue with the insurrectional plans, convinced that even in those difficult material circumstances the top revolutionary leaders should arrive on the Island as soon as possible, so he signed the order for the uprising on January 29, in New York, as a delegate of the PRC, together with Enrique Collazo and Mayía Rodríguez.
He used a thin paper to write the document and conceal it inside a cigar, and tasked the Cuban Blas Fernández O'Hallorans, owner of a factory in Tampa, with the rolling of five identical cigars and marking the one carrying the message with two yellow stains on its upper wrapper.
The marked cigar would travel with the others inside a pocket of the conspirator Miguel Angel Duque De Estrada and be delivered in Havana to Juan Gualberto Gomez, who would send the orders for the rebellion to the leaders of the conspiracy in other regions.
Gomez chose February 24 to take advantage of the carnival celebrations in Havana so that the movements and meetings of the mambi fighters could go unnoticed and sent emissaries to the provinces to secure an agreement with the local leaders of the groups of conspirators.
The eastern and central leaders accepted and supported the uprising, but Spanish spies found out about the preparations in western Cuba. General Julio Sanguily, head of the insurrection in Havana, was arrested, and so were Juan Gualberto Gómez and other conspirators, in a move that dashed the hopes of a revolt in the west.
On February 24, Guillermón Moncada, Bartolomé Masó, Quintín Bandera, Pedro (Periquito) Pérez and other patriots led the uprising in the eastern region. On April 1, Antonio Maceo, his brother José and Flor Crombet disembarked landed on the shores of Duaba, in the present province of Guantánamo, and Martí and Máximo Gómez followed suit on April 11th.
Thus began the last stage of the anti-colonial struggle in Cuba, picked up by other generations of revolutionaries during the pseudo-republic, until the definitive triumph of January 1, 1959, which turned the homeland into the reality that Martí envisaged before he fell in the war eventually frustrated by the U.S. intervention of 1898.