Official Database of Mambi Fighters from the Cuban War of Independence (1895-1898)
Cuba's War of Independence ran from 1895 to 1898, as Cuban revolutionaries fought Spanish colonial rule. The war drew international attention, especially from the United States. After the USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor in 1898, the United States entered the conflict alongside the Cuban rebels, and the Spanish-American War followed.
Spain was defeated, and the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1898. Cuba gained its independence from Spain, while the United States took control of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
The Yndice Alfabético y Defunciones del Ejército Libertador de Cuba – Guerra de Independencia, iniciada el 24 de Febrero de 1895 y terminada oficialmente el 24 de Agosto de 1898 (Alphabetical Index and Deaths of the Cuban Liberation Army) is an official record of those who took part in the Cuban War of Independence. Carlos Roloff Mialofsky, then Inspector General of the Liberation Army, ordered the report, which was published in book form in 1901. This database is drawn almost entirely from that book.
The database contains 63,839 individuals. Most entries include the first names of the person's mother and father, so you can often reconstruct surnames using Spanish naming conventions (Firstname PaternalSurname MaternalSurname). Take Pedro Abad Burgat: his father's first name was Aniceto and his mother's Antonia, so the father was likely Aniceto Abad and the mother Antonia Burgat. This does not hold every time, but it is right more often than not.
The database does not yet include the death records after page 1004. The Cuba Research Project is transcribing them; until then, researchers can consult the book directly using the download link below.
Sources
Because of the volume of transcribed data, some errors are inevitable, so check entries against the original book where accuracy matters.
Download the book, Yndice alfabético y defunciones del ejército libertador de Cuba, here.
Download the database in Excel format: Yndice Alfabético y Defunciones spreadsheet or Cuba Mambi Database.
Deaths of the Liberation Army (Defunciones)
This collection also includes the Defunciones del Ejército Libertador de Cuba, the army's register of confirmed war dead, transcribed page by page from the original volume compiled by the Inspección General del Ejército Libertador. Each entry records the soldier's rank, regiment, birthplace, and parents, and how, where, and when he died, and can be filtered by year of death. As the register itself notes, these are only the deaths that could be positively confirmed: "no son todas las que ocurrieron durante la campaña, pues la mayoría permanecen todavía ignoradas."
Acknowledgements
The Cuba Research Project thanks CubaGenWeb and its volunteers, who produced the first transcription of these records into database form. Visit the CubaGenWeb Mambi database here.
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