She herself joined the struggle in October 1868 aged only 16 when her father asked her to carry the independent Cuban flag into battle at Bayamo.

[1] She accepted the risky task enthusiastically and entered the town seated on a white horse carrying the newly designed flag.

Candelaria, and her siblings were finally ordered to leave Cuba by October 17, 1871, or face deportation to the island of Fernando Poo (now called Bioko) off the west coast of Africa.

[2] In 1877, she married another Cuban exile, Federico del Portillo, who had studied law at the University of Havana but had fled to escape Spanish execution of students.

[1] Candelaria died on January 19, 1914, and was buried, with full military honors in the Cementerio de Colón in Havana.