Fernandina Filibuster Fiasco: Birth of the 1895 Cuban War of Independence

In early January 1895, Cuban exile leader Jose Marti completed preparations in the United States and the Caribbean to ignite a revolt against Spanish colonial despotism in his homeland. Three vessels were chartered in New York and Boston to retrieve hundreds of weapons from a warehouse in Fernandina Beach, Florida, and board contingents of Cuban revolutionaries in Key West, the Dominican Republic, and Costa Rica to disembark on the island in conjunction with nationwide internal uprisings. During the previous forty-five years, Cuban patriots had been launching dozens of similar military filibuster expeditions from the United States, which the federal government moved to suppress for violating the Neutrality Act. The Fernandina affair ran into trouble when New York\u27s World revealed parts of the conspiracy and the local collector of customs reacted by taking legal steps to seize the weapons, have the sailing charters revoked, and detain Marti and his cohorts for questioning

Cuban Exiles in Key West during the Ten Years\u27 War, 1868-1878

The upheaval of the Cuban Ten Years\u27 War (10 October 1868-10 February 1878) prompted the largest number of refugees fleeing the island to settle ninety miles away in Key West, Florida, the southernmost point of the United States. Although the expatriates transformed the physical landscape of the coral and limestone reef and modified its social, economic, and political order, there has been no demographic study or precise statistics on the Cubans in Key West during that decade. Likewise, accurate statistical data is lacking for Cubans in the United States throughout the nineteenth century. In 1870, Key West had the second largest Cuban emigre community. A decade later, the city was the capital of the Cuban exiles and the conspiratorial center for their independence movement. This essay fills the gap in our knowledge on the status of Cubans in Key West during that era by examining statistical evidence enumerated in the United States federal census of 1870 and 1880, according to place of birth, race, age, gender, parentage, marital status, occupation, education, wealth, health, and residence.

Ambrosio Jose Gonzales: A Cuban Confederate colonel.

Ambrosio Jose Gonzales, born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1818, at the age of ten was sent to school in New York City, where he made friends with classmate Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard. Gonzales became imbued with the Democratic ideals of the Jacksonian era before returning to Cuba, where he received a law degree from the University of Havana and became a freemason. The corruption of Spain\u27s colonial judicial system prompted him to forsake on principle a lucrative career for that of a college teacher. In 1848, Gonzales joined the Havana Club conspiracy planning to follow the Texas model to annex Cuba to the United States. Gonzales went to the United States in 1848, where as second-in-command to General Narciso Lopez, he was a leading organizer of what became known as the 1849 Round Island expedition, the 1850 Cardenas invasion, and the 1851 Cleopatra and Pampero expeditions, to liberate Cuba. The Cuban annexation movement played an important role in the causation of the American Civil War. Since Cuba was an agricultural slave society, its acquisition was spurned by the North and coveted by the South. Northerners considered the filibusters part of a slave power conspiracy to expand their dominions into the Caribbean Basin, and Southerners responded to this opposition in Congress with increasing demands for secession. These intrigues prompted Gonzales to write a manifesto on Cuban annexation to the United States and brought him into close contact with influential Southern politicians, including Jefferson Davis, John C. Calhoun, John Quitman, Mirabeau Lamar, Pierre Soule, John Slidell, James Chesnut, Jr., Louis T. Wigfall, Francis Pickens, James H. Hammond, Stephen Mallory, Robert Toombs and John Henderson. Gonzales married into an aristocratic South Carolina family in 1856, and his sense of duty and obligation to his adopted state motivated his joining the Confederacy. He served under various generals, including Beauregard, Robert E. Lee, John Pemberton, Samuel Jones, William Hardee and Joseph E. Johnston. A personal feud with Jefferson Davis resulted in Gonzales being denied six times promotion to brigadier general. Early in the war, Gonzales invented a siege train flying artillery to quickly mobilize heavy guns to enemy disembarkment positions. As chief of artillery and chief of ordnance for the Department of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, Gonzales helped defend the city of Charleston against repeated Union encroachments, and devised planting land mines in the gorge of Battery Wagner, which helped impede a now famous Union attack there spearheaded by the African-American 54th Massachusetts Regiment. In 1864, Gonzales commanded the artillery at the battle of Honey Hill, enabling 1,200 Confederates to defeat 5,000 federals. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Otro título: [Tertulia Literaria Hispanoamericana]. Sesión 345, 07 de febrero de 1961

Rafael Montesinos comunica que el presentador, José Luis Acquaroni, no puede asistir por haber sufrido una indisposición y su presentación será leída por Gastón Baquero – Min. 00.30: Gastón Baquero da lectura al texto de Acquaroni quien alude al antiguo emplazamiento de la tertulia en la calle de Marqués de Riscal, en Madrid – Min. 06.00: Aplausos – Min. 06.09: Comienza la intervención de Jesús Antonio Cova con los agradecimientos protocolarios y comienza la disertación sobre la moderna poesía venezolana – Min. 31.47: Acaba la grabación abruptamente, falta contenido.Rafael Montesinos. Gastón Baquero. Antonio CovaMadrid, Instituto de Cultura Hispánica. Martes, 07 de febrero a las ocho menos cuarto de la tard

Otro título: [Tertulia Literaria Hispanoamericana]. Sesión 345, 07 de febrero de 1961

Rafael Montesinos. Gastón Baquero. Antonio CovaMadrid, Instituto de Cultura Hispánica. Martes, 07 de febrero a las ocho menos cuarto de la tardeRafael Montesinos comunica que el presentador, José Luis Acquaroni, no puede asistir por haber sufrido una indisposición y su presentación será leída por Gastón Baquero – Min. 00.30: Gastón Baquero da lectura al texto de Acquaroni quien alude al antiguo emplazamiento de la tertulia en la calle de Marqués de Riscal, en Madrid – Min. 06.00: Aplausos – Min. 06.09: Comienza la intervención de Jesús Antonio Cova con los agradecimientos protocolarios y comienza la disertación sobre la moderna poesía venezolana – Min. 31.47: Acaba la grabación abruptamente, falta contenido

The COVID - AGICT study: COVID–19 and advanced gastro-intestinal cancer surgical treatment. A multicentric Italian study on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic impact on gastro-intestinal cancers surgical treatment during the 2020. Analysis of perioperative and short-term oncological outcomes

Background This Italian multicentric retrospective study aimed to investigate the possible changes in outcomes of patients undergoing surgery for gastrointestinal cancers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method Our primary endpoint was to determine whether the pandemic scenario increased the rate of patients with colorectal, gastroesophageal, and pancreatic cancers resected at an advanced stage in 2020 compared to 2019. Considering different cancer staging systems, we divided tumors into early stages and advanced stages, using pathological outcomes. Furthermore, to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on surgical outcomes, perioperative data of both 2020 and 2019 were also examined. Results Overall, a total of 8250 patients, 4370 (53%) and 3880 (47%) were surgically treated during 2019 and 2020 respectively, in 62 Italian surgical Units. In 2020, the rate of patients treated with an advanced pathological stage was not different compared to 2019 (P = 0.25). Nevertheless, the analysis of quarters revealed that in the second half of 2020 the rate of advanced cancer resected, tented to be higher compared with the same months of 2019 (P = 0.05). During the pandemic year ‘Charlson Comorbidity Index score of cancer patients (5.38 ± 2.08 vs 5.28 ± 2.22, P = 0.036), neoadjuvant treatments (23.9% vs. 19.5%, P < 0.001), rate of urgent diagnosis (24.2% vs 20.3%, P < 0.001), colorectal cancer urgent resection (9.4% vs. 7.37, P < 0.001), and the rate of positive nodes on the total nodes resected per surgery increased significantly (7 vs 9% - 2.02 ± 4.21 vs 2.39 ± 5.23, P < 0.001). Conclusions Although the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic did not influence the pathological stage of colorectal, gastroesophageal, and pancreatic cancers at the time of surgery, our study revealed that the pandemic scenario negatively impacted on several perioperative and post-operative outcomes