CubaPLUS Magazine

"Don't you remember, gentle Bayamese, / that you were my shining sun? / And smiling on your languid forehead / soft kiss I printed with ardour".

This is how the first verses of the romantic troubadour song La Bayamesa -one of the two compositions with the same name created in Cuba- sung in a beautiful serenade at the window of a young wife, in reparation and with a request for forgiveness, which would go through time to deeply move the listener in our days.

The singing took place on the night of March 27, 1851, next to the wooden bars of the house of beautiful Luz Vázquez y Moreno, headed by her consort, with whom she already had two daughters, a young nobleman of rank who responded to the name of Francisco del Castillo y Moreno.

It was in the center of Bayamo, a prosperous eastern town blessed by the fertile basin of the extensive Cauto River and next to another river with the same name as the city.

Accompanying the heartbroken lover, anxious for pardon, were his friends Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, who later became the Father of the Nation, poet José Fornaris and the tenor Carlos Pérez who masterfully intoned the beautiful piece that would inaugurate the creations of his style in colonial Cuba.

As a result of that magic night, the incomparable Luz forgave her spouse and they returned to being happy, as they were known. They had five more children after that reconciliation. Years later, when in 1868 Carlos Manuel de Céspedes started the first emancipatory war in La Demajagua, Manzanillo and later the revolutionary takeover of the fighting city of Bayamo, Luz Vázquez, her husband and their descendants had a very prominent participation in those historical events. 

The lyrics of the romantic song La Bayamesa were changed into an ardent patriotic plea, well known and spread like wildfire, encouraging the insurgent camp, supporting the unprecedented detonation that meant the emergence, on October 20 of that same year, of the other song La bayamesa, known today as the National Anthem. Luz Vázquez was a brave and legendary Cuban woman.