Draft:Eusebio Manzueta

Eusebio Manzueta (1823 – November 12, 1873) was a Dominican landowner and soldier in the wars of Independence of the Dominican Republic.

Early life

Manzueta was born in 1823, in Yamasá, which in those times belonged to the National District. He was a large landowner in the eastern area. During the Dominican War of Independence, he served as a militia colonel in the Dominican Army. As a personal friend and follower of General Pedro Santana, he supported his annexation project to Spain and was registered as an officer of the reserves at the service of the new authorities.

Dominican independence from Spain

But after Cry of Capotillo, August 16, 1863, and the spread of the liberating war, Eusebio Manzueta left the anti-national side and placed himself in the trenches of the patriots. This was another blow to Santana's sour mood. Courageous to any test, diligent in command and endowed with great inventiveness in the field of combat, Manzueta became one of the most important leaders of the restoration forces. In September 1863 was appointed by the Provisional Weapons Commander of Yamasá. Weeks later he was promoted from colonel to brigadier general and on Holy Thursday of the March 19, 1864, he commanded the troops that fought the famous Battle of Paso del Muerto in which the annexationist general Juan Suero was killed in battle.

Eusebio Manzueta played a leading role, along with patriotic officers such as Tenares, Marcos Evangelista Adón, Troncoso and others of similar worth, in the efforts to stop the advance of Santana and the Spaniards towards Cibao. He fought incessantly and throughout the war, in advances and retreats, in frontal crashes and actions guerrillas, with whom he made an invaluable contribution to the liberation of the Eastern region, which had in the taking of El Seibo its climax point. The government very justly granted him the military leadership of the entire region.

At the time of evacuation of Santo Domingo by the Spanish occupiers, on July 11, 1865, Manzueta entered with Cabral to the city and after He proclaimed himself president and revolted against Pimentel, who exercised the government from Santiago, General Manzueta traveled with Cabral to Cibao as a sign of support and adhesion to the new president. However, when Cabral leaned toward Báez and led to the return of this anti-national leader to the presidency, General Manzueta distanced himself from Cabral and declared himself in open opposition to Báez. The disastrous policy of Spanish authorities pushed production towards ruin agricultural and livestock. In all strata of the peasantry and even in the rich haters and farmers the feeling of protest, against all the burdensome measures ordered by the Spanish.

By expanding the sphere of classes and interests affected by the annexation regime, the extension of the social base of resistance. By that, it was possible to observe how, along with the peasants who mostly threw themselves into the fight against the annexation; to the middle layers of the urban petite bourgeoisie, made up mainly of artisans, small merchants, professionals and former government train employees; to the commercial bourgeoisie, especially its representatives in Cibao; and to the nationalist and liberal intellectuality; participated in the war rich landowners and great hateros like Pedro Antonio Pimentel and Santiago Rodríguez Masagó, Pedro Gregorio Martínez, Juan Nouesí, and Manzueta himself.

If these objective causes placed many landowners on the side of the national cause, in the case of General Manzueta merit must be recognized additional, because he, although he fought in the Restoration War because he felt his class interests were affected, he fought, above all, as a patriot; by the national sentiment that drove his conscience and his soldier's machete. He had already demonstrated his patriotism in the war of liberation from the Haitians, he remained loyal in the Restoration war and continued his career as a patriot with the dignified attitude he assumed in front of Cabral when, in an unforgivable gesture of inconsistency, he prepared to bring Báez back to the presidency.

Opposition against Báez

Manzueta's merit grew even more when in the 1868, the inauguration of the dark period known as the Six Years' era, Báez climbed for the fourth time on the heights of power and returned to his old adventures of selling the country, now with the in order to annex the country to the United States, which were already an imperialist power. So Cabral opposed that tried and when he decided to face it and rose in the South together with Luperón and the brothers Ogando, to wage the War of Six Years, Cabral found the general Manzueta in the same trench in which he left him when they separated after the victory over the Spanish. The general Manzueta was already raised in the jungle of their region. On the sidelines of the comfortable life that his extensive wealth could have guaranteed him, he prepared to live as hermit in the closed montería from Masabá, along with his brother Leandro and a handful of his followers. An amnesty was issued expressly to pacify him and he radically rejected it.

Persecution and death

Although with very little war activity and no apparent connection with those who fought in the South remained raised, turned uncapturable by the forces of government, until the treacherous clutches of the delation. Another Judas, who said he was his follower and friend, put him on hands of the Baezist tyranny that had been pursuing him for years.

He was sentenced to death and executed on November 12, 1873, in full decline of that corrupt government, which A month and a half later it fell into the middle of the puddle formed by the blood of his victims.

See also

• Marcos Evangelista Adón
• Benito Monción
• Leandro Manzueta
• Dominican Restoration War

References

Category:1823 births Category:1873 deaths Category:People of the Dominican War of Independence Category:People of the Dominican Restoration War Category:Dominican Republic revolutionaries Category:Dominican Republic independence activists