It is said that on August 17, 1870, when a Spanish squad moved to shoot him, Pedro (Perucho) Figueredo, whispered verses of the fight hymn ever, before the cheers of a crowd, pointed on the back of his horse, on the legendary Bayamo.
No wonder a few minutes before getting a load of leads, Perucho intoned lyric that inspired an entire people, who accompanied the mambises in the battlefields and until today, is a melody that lies at the heart of every Cuban that means to die for the Homeland is to live.
Five days earlier he had been captured Bayamo famous lawyer, lover of literature and music, the great cartoonist and illustrator whose works were shattered when like his countrymen, set fire to his home during the memorable burning of Bayamo in January 1869.
Very ill with typhoid fever, he was convalescing in precarious conditions on the farm Santa Rosa de Cabaniguao, in Las Tunas, helped by some family members and colleagues who had been under his command.
Because of the betrayal of the soldier Luis Tamayo, who was detained by a guerrilla group commanded by Spanish Colonel Francisco Cañizal, he left in search of resources, Perucho was taken prisoner along with their descendants, as well as Brigadier Rodrigo Tamayo and his son Ignacio .
After being transferred to Santiago de Cuba, they were tried before a government headed by Colonel Francisco Terrero, who heard the defendant court: "I am a lawyer and as such know the laws and know that it falls to me but not why you believe they will succeed, because the island is lost to Spain. "
Another reply man in epic poems called not fear a glorious death, that his courage was listed "Bayamo cock", who was once the myopic child forced to wear glasses, a condition that not merely is not expected to appreciate Homeland pain with heart eyes.
It was this virtue, coined by his accusers as a crime of disloyalty, what led him to receive the death penalty, consummated in early morning before the walls of a slaughter animal, in the Santiago land, which were also executed Rodrigo and Ignacio.
At that time I had nothing to do Perucho with wealthy lawyer who was then the condition had become a mere skeleton, with sores on their feet, almost crippled, so he asked his executioners some means to move to where I say goodbye to the underworld.
As a joke, a Spanish boss offered him a donkey that would take him to the Royal Prison of Santiago de Cuba (later known as VIVAC building and today home to the Office of the Historian of the City and Provincial Historical Archive), to the slaughterhouse .
"It'll be the first redeemer let her ride on a donkey," replied Perucho, referring to Christ which was mandated in prison, where in a letter to his wife, one day before he died, said, "in heaven us and meanwhile we will not forget in your prayers to your husband who loves you. "
Before the visit of an emissary of Count Valmaseda to recant in exchange for spare his life, he refused, even as I prepared to kneel before the shooters firing managers silence his voice forever.
It is, however, the voice multiplied by several generations of compatriots who from children chanting the hymn was first Bayamo and after all Cuba, whose notes are heard anywhere in the world and as a ticket to eternity, Perucho sang the fateful August 17, 1870.