Napoleón Arango was a Cuban plantation owner and mambí officer who defected to the Spanish Army during the Ten Years' War.

[1] In the lead-up to Carlos Manuel de Céspedes' Cry of Yara in Eastern Cuba, Arango expressed doubts about their readiness to overcome the Spanish troops and showed reluctance toward the idea of freeing his slaves.

With Napoleón and Augusto Arango at the head of a squad, they forced a Spanish garrison, consisting of a lieutenant and 30 cavalrymen, to surrender on November 4, 1868, at San Miguel de Bagá near Nuevitas.

Given his family's influential status and his brother's sacrifice for the cause, his sentence was reduced, though he was banned from returning to Cuba under threat of execution.

[9] By February 1870, it was reported that Gen. Arango voluntarily surrendered to the authorities at Las Minas and that he vowed to confer with the Captain General Antonio Caballero y Fernández de Rodas on the best means of ending the insurrection without further bloodshed.