During the Ten Years War (1868–78), the Spanish built a line of fortifications to protect the western sugar regions of Cuba. Known as la trocha, these barriers confined Cuban revolutionaries to the eastern province of Oriente. Two decades later, Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo crossed this threshold while fighting the third War of Cuban Independence, and the war spread across the island. By then Gómez’s military strategy relied not on combat, but on setting fire to the property of peninsulares (Spaniards born on the Iberian peninsula) and criollos (Spanish descendants born in Cuba), who collaborated with the Spanish regime. 

This Spanish military photograph features the leaders of the Spanish Regiment of Tarragona who participated in the battle of Potrero de Saratoga (Paddock of Saratoga) in June 1896. General Gómez’s troops’ western-to-eastern crossing of la trocha provoked this encounter. Both armies claimed victory in this confrontation, one of the war’s bloodiest battles.