On 10 October 1868, a group in Oriente Province led by sugar planter and mill owner Carlos Manuel de Céspedes proclaimed Cuba's independence from Spain, launching a decade of hostilities known as the Ten Years' War.

A second group of rebels, Havana students from prominent families, had formed their own Revolutionary Committee and rejected both Céspedes' conservativism and his claim to lead the insurgency which, in their view, he had launched precipitously in order to assume its leadership.

He relinquished his claim to military authority, accepted the position of president of the new republic, and agreed that the powers of that office would be defined by a constitution.

As one historian assesses the constitutional experiment:[1] [Local military leaders] were the ones who laid down the rebel law in their territories, and they were therefore the real wielders of power in the insurrectionists' camp.

In this context it is easy to understand why the idealistic language of the Guáimaro Constitution soon began to ring hollow and why the central government it proclaimed came to be a chimeric institution.