Battle of Pino de Baire

A Spanish column of more than 700 men commanded by Colonel Demetrio Quirós was en route to Bayamo from Manzanillo[1] or Santiago de Cuba[2] to recapture the city from Carlos Manuel de Céspedes when ambushed by Máximo Gómez's forces, who were under the command of Donato Mármol, at Baire,[3] near Contramaestre.

The column was armed with swords and bayonets while the mambises carried mostly machetes, pitchforks, and other farming tools.[4] Due to the superior quality of Spanish equipment, Gómez decided to engage in close combat with machetes, a weapon he was familiar with from his service in the Dominican Republic.

The battle was disastrous for the Spanish column, who disorderly retreated after suffering numerous casualties. The column retreated to Santiago de Cuba with near one third of the men lost.[1] In this retreat the force left behind firearms, ammunition, and a train of artillery.[4] The mambises were left with a few men injured.

The battle was depicted in the 1969 black and white film La primera carga al machete directed by Manuel Octavio Gómez.[5]

• “La primera carga al machete, de Manuel Octavio Gómez: Cine, mito y revolución” Artículo de Santiago Juan-Navarro publicado en Cinéma et Révolution cubaine. Eds. Julie Amiot and Nancy Berthier. Lyon: Université Lyon 2 – GRIMH, 2006. 105–113.
• Murguía, Salvador Jimenez; O'Reilly, Sean; McMenamin, Amanda (15 January 2020). A Cuban Cinema Companion. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-5381-0774-4.
• Navarro García, Luis (1998). Las guerras de España en Cuba. Madrid: Ediciones Encuentro. ISBN 8474904749.
• Walker, Jeanie Mort (1875). Life of Capt. Joseph Fry, the Cuban martyr. Being a faithful record of his remarkable career from childhood to the time of his heroic death at the hands of Spanish executioners; recounting his experience as an officer in the U. S. and Confederate navies, and revealing much of the inner history and secret marine service of the late Civil War in America. Hartford, J. B. Burr.