Maceo was one of the most noteworthy guerrilla leaders in 19th century Latin America, comparable to José Antonio Páez of Venezuela in military acumen.

[citation needed] The Cuban Freemasonry movement was influenced by the principles of the French Revolution - "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" - as well as the Masons' main guidelines: God, Reason, Virtue.

Mariana Grajales, followed her family members into the manigua (the woods and most thick countryside) in order to support the Mambises, as Cuban rebels were known in the 19th century.

Men under Maceo's command began to call him "The Bronze Titan", because of his exceptional physical strength and resistance to bullet or blade injuries.

He had special recognition and admiration, as chief and war teacher, of the great Dominican strategist Máximo Gómez, who would become, in the years to come, the General-in-Chief of the Cuban Liberator Army.

The use of the machete as a war weapon by Gómez as a substitute for the Spanish sword (also due to the scarcity of firearms and ammunition) was rapidly adopted by Maceo and his troops.

Antonio Maceo rejected the military seditions of Lagunas de Varona and Santa Rita, which undermined the independence troops' unity and favoured a regionalism in Las Villas.

An officer of honour, he offered peace guarantees, amnesty for revolutionary men and legal reforms, in exchange for a cease of hostilities, which had already lasted 10 years (in 1878).

Maceo, with the experience and wisdom gained from previous revolutionary failures, argued that there were a number of impediments to military success in a brief but intense epistolary exchange with Martí, warning about the causes of the partial defeat in the Ten Years' War (1868–78).

In Costa Rica, he faced, gun in hand, another attempt of assassination by Spanish agents at the exit of a theatre, with fatal result for one of the aggressors.

In 1895, together with Flor Crombet and other lesser officers, Maceo disembarked in the vicinity of Baracoa (close to the eastern tip of Cuba) and after repelling a Spanish attempt at capturing or killing him, he got into the mountains of that region.

After many difficulties, he managed to gather a small contingent of armed men, which rapidly grew with other rebel groups of the Santiago de Cuba region.

Several days later, Martí, treated as a non-military "Doctor" by Maceo, would fall in battle in Dos Ríos (confluence between the rivers Contramaestre and Cauto).

Starting from Mangos de Baraguá (place of the historical protest in front of Martínez-Campos), Maceo and Gómez, on command of two long mambises columns, took brilliantly the task of invading the west of Cuba, riding or walking more than 1000 miles in 96 days.

The level of coordination and cohesiveness of Cuban forces was driven by the fact that Máximo Gómez had clearly established a chain of command that subordinated all Major Generals to Maceo, his executive officer.

After decimating Spanish forces in the westernmost mountains of Cuba, Maceo turned eastward again, crossing the mentioned trail in order to travel to Las Villas or Camagüey.

They were later buried in secret in the farm of two brothers who swore to keep the burial place in secrecy until Cuba would be free and independent and the correspondent military honors could be given to the hero.

Nowadays, the remains of Antonio Maceo y Grajales and Francisco Gómez Toro lie in the Monumento El Cacahual south of Havana, close to the limits of the former farm of San Pedro, and the site is one of pilgrimage by Cuban people.

Of democratic political adherence, he expressed many times his sympathy for the republican form of government, but insisted on seeking for the formula of "liberty; equality and fraternity", recalling the well-known but almost never applied principles of the French Revolution and defining a policy on the search for social justice.