Blanca Rosa Figueredo y Vazquez

Blanca Rosa Figueredo y Vazquez and Ricardo Rogelio de Cespedes y Cespedes

Blanca Rosa (Blanquita) Figueredo y Vazquez was born in 1850,¹ and married Ricardo Rogelio de Cespedes y Cespedes.¹ Ricardo was the son of Francisco Javier de Céspedes and María Trinidad de Céspedes. Ricardo Rogelio was born in Bayamo in 1848, and, after completing his primary education in Cuba, travelled to the USA where he studied commerce. He returned to Cuba, settling in Manzanillo, and entered the import/export business of los señores Ramírez and Oro.

Ricardo and Blanca were married by the start of the Ten Years’ War and in 1868, took part in the capture of Bayamo. Flora Mora wrote in Biografia de Perucho Figueredo, that they were also at Santa Rosa in August 1870, when Colonel Cañizal surprised the village and that they were both taken prisoner. Another source, ???, says that Ricardo, his brother Carlos Manuel (Carlitos) de Céspedes, and Perucho’s son, Gustavo Figueredo, carried Perucho, who was extremely sick, to a hidden place, leaving him in the care of Candelaria and his servant, Severino. Blanca was captured and was deported from Cuba, sailing with her mother and several of her siblings to New York where they lived for a little over a year until, on December 11, 1871, they moved to Key West.

Eusebio Leal Spengler agrees in El Diario Perdido that Ricardo and Blanca were involved in the taking of Bayamo: “Junto con ella tomó las armas y ambos participaron en la gloriosa jornada de la toma de Bayamo” [Together with her he seized the weapons and both participated in the glorious journey of the taking of Bayamo] but says nothing of their being captured at Santa Rosa. Instead, Spengler tells that Ricardo rose to the rank of colonel and accompanied General Máximo Gómez at the invasion of Las Villas. At Las Villas, Ricardo was taken prisoner and confined in the Castillo del Morro in Santiago de Cuba before being deported to Spain.

In 1895, he returned to Cuba, and soon resumed the fight for independence, this time in the war of 1895, which led up to the Spanish-American War. A Ricardo Céspedes appears in the Roloff Military Index, a list of soldiers who served in this war. The name of the father of this Ricardo Céspedes is not given and his mother is referred to as Encarnacion, so this may, or may not, be the husband of Blanca Rosa. He enlisted on March 15, 1895, in the Regimiento de Infanteria Betances with the rank of teniente [lieutenant].

In about 1899, he returned to Manzanillo. In fact, we read, in Cuba by Hugh Thomas, that “Ricardo Céspedes (son of the leader in the first civil war) ² was mayor of Manzanillo” in 1899, following the Spanish American War. Thomas wrote that this appointment was one of many given as a reward to “those who made their name in the war.”

Ada Ferrer, writing in Insurgent Cuba, sees it differently. She wrote that towards the end of 1898, with the Cuban forces poised to defeat the Spanish, the Cubans began to replace those whom Ferrer described as “unworthy of authority in peacetime” with “others presumed more worthy”. She continued: “across the island, in every army corps, old-timers witnessed the sudden appearance of new commanders, seemingly from out of nowhere: men like the ‘young Figueredo’ in Oriente, who arrived from exile and was promoted to first lieutenant in August 1898, only three or four months after he joined the insurgency.”

We can’t say positively that “young Figueredo” was Ricardo - Ricardo was 50 in 1898 - and to characterize his appointment as first lieutenant as anything other than deserved considering his service in the Ten Years’ War seems unfair. Blanca and Ricardo, in any case, had a son, also called Ricardo or Ricardito.

# Child of Blanca Rosa Figueredo and Ricardo de Céspedes:

i Ricardo (Ricardito) de Cespedes y Figueredo

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¹ Source: De Cuba a Boyaca por la Libertad, page 4

² Footnote: Ricardo was actually the son of Francisco Javier Céspedes, brother of “the leader in the first civil war”.

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