Goicuría y Cabrera, Domingo (1804–1870)

Domingo Goicuría y Cabrera (b. 23 June 1804; d. 6 May 1870), Cuban independence figure. Goicuría, a native of Havana, was a rich merchant who became even richer during the U.S. Civil War running supplies from Mexico to Texas. He favored slavery and the colonization of Cuba by whites. A tenacious opponent of Spanish colonial rule, at first he advocated the annexation of the island to the United States, and in 1855 he supported a U.S.-backed expedition to Cuba that failed. This led him to embrace the idea of independence, and a year later he joined forces with the American filibuster William Walker for the invasion of Nicaragua. He expected that after taking over Nicaragua, Walker would invade Cuba. But Walker wanted to conquer the rest of Central America rather than Cuba, and the two men quarreled. Afterward Goicuría intensified his anti-Spanish activities until he finally succeeded in invading Cuba after the 1868 outbreak of the Ten Years' War. He was captured in February 1870 by the Spaniards and three months later was publicly executed by garrote in Havana.

See alsoFilibustering; Ten Years, War; Walker, William.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Gerald E. Poyo makes some references to Goicuría's activities in "With All and for the Good of All" (1989). See also Vidal Morales, Iniciadores y primeros mártires de la revolución cubana (1963), vol 3.

Additional Bibliography

May, Robert E. Manifest Destiny's Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.

                                           JosÉ M. HernÁndez