Poet, patriot and martyr, Juan Clemente Zenea was born at Bayamo in 1831, and in boyhood settled in Havana. He was a teacher in La Luz's school, El Salvador, and wrote some exquisite poems. But politics and Cuban independence claimed his chief attention. From his seventeenth year he was incessantly engaged in revolutionary conspiracies, in Havana and in New Orleans and New York. In 1868, he went to New York where he was an active member of the Junta. In 1870, he was sent on a mission to President Cespedes, which he accomplished but soon afterward was captured by the Spaniards, imprisoned in Cabanas, and then shot.
This action would hardly have been conducive to good feeling between the opposing leaders, even had the Cubans had faith in Spanish promises. In too hard a school had they learned that it was useless to expect the Spanish authorities on the Island to keep their word to the Cubans, either in the small matter of a safe conduct for an innocent messenger, or the larger one of proposed concessions to an oppressed people. The Cuban government was not to be thus easily lured from their attempts to secure the one thing which was to them paramount, the real object for which they had made so many sacrifices, the absolute independence of the Island. Moreover, even were the promise made under the guarantee of the United States Government, the Cubans could not be convinced of the good faith of Spain, or that when once they had abandoned their struggle, laid down their arms, and given Spain the advantage, she would act otherwise than she had during her entire occupation of the Island. They felt sure that if her advances were graciously met, she would, when she again had the balance of power, simply impose upon the Island new indignities, and cover her treachery with fair words and vague promises whenever the United States might enter a protest.
Spain expressed indignation at the shortsighted policy of the Cuban leaders, and then gave demonstration of how she intended to punish Cuba. She renewed her persecution of individual Cubans, and her cruelty toward Cuban sympathizers who while nursing their cordial feelings for the revolution had not yet taken up arms against Spain. It was only necessary that such persons should be suspected, and that suspicion might be of the slightest variety. They were immediately seized and thrown into dungeons and tortured to extract their confessions; the right of trial was at this time almost entirely dispensed with, and victims of Spanish wrath were put to death without an opportunity to defend themselves, and executed in ways which are usually associated with the most barbarous savageness. So glaring did these outrages become that General Cespedes undertook to write a letter to the Spanish Government at Madrid concerning them, although why, knowing the character of his opponents as he did, he should have entertained the idea that this mild intervention on his part would have the slightest effect, or should have imagined that Spain was not cognizant of the actions of her legionaries in Cuba, and that such actions were performed without her fullest sanction, is not revealed. Cespedes certainly displayed a childlike faith in the ultimate spark of good in depraved human nature, when he took up his pen for such a communication. But be that as it may, he addressed the following epistle to the "Supreme Government of Spain."