Perucho Figueredo


Artist Biography by Uncle Dave Lewis
Lawyer and landowner was a principal player in the 19th century Cuban resistance against Spain and a talented composer, poet, and musician. Raised on a sugar plantation, earned his law degree from the University of Madrid in 1844, but did not practice until he settled in Havana in 1856, during which time he contributed pieces of music and articles to the newspaper La Piragua. When his father died, returned to Bayamo to administer the family property. He rejected the heavy taxation upon landowners from local authorities representing Spanish interests, and this earned him 14 months of house arrest. During this time, composed arduously, home-schooled his children, and secretly conspired to overthrow the Spanish-backed Cuban government. and his co-conspirators began to organize in earnest in 1867, and they asked to compose something that would serve as "our 'Marseillaise'." composed the song "La Bayamesa" and first delivered it before the Comité Revolucionario de Bayamo on August 15, 1867. Repeated during the Corpus Christi celebrations in Bayamo of June 1868, "La Bayamesa" quickly caught the attention of local Spanish authorities. It would be too little, too late, as an army of rebels under the leadership of took the town of Bayamo on October 20. However, by January 1869 a Spanish force, 2,000 strong, arrived to take it back, prompting to burn all of his property, including his music manuscripts, in a massive bonfire set atop the two pianos in his manor house. For nearly two years, and his fellow refugees managed to elude capture, but on August 15, 1870, soldiers discovered hiding in a forest. Convicted of treason, he was executed two days later. Weakened and ill from his long months as a fugitive, requested a carriage to be taken to his execution, as he was unable to march. The authorities allowed him to ride a donkey instead, prompting a quotation from now famous in Cuba: "No es el primer redentor que cabalga sobre un asno". Since its official adoption in 1902, "La Bayamesa" has served as the National Anthem of the Republic of Cuba. As far as is known, scholars have never investigated other music of , as little of it as might still be extant.

Pedro Felipe Figueredo, mostly known as Perucho was a Cuban poet, musician, and freedom fighter of the 19th century. In the 1860s, he was active in the planning of the Cuban uprising against the Spanish known as the Ten Years' War.
He wrote the Cuban national anthem, El Himno de Bayamo, in 1867.
He was captured during the war and executed on 17 August 1870.
His daughter Candelaria Figueredo became a hero of the uprising by carrying the new independent Cuban flag into battle at Bayamo in 1868.