He was one of the 22 children of Don Joaquín Sánchez Marín and Doña Isabel María de Valdivia y Salas, who came from colonial Sancti Spiritus families with well-off economic positions.

[2] He experienced his youth between the rural town of Arroyo Blanco, where his family came from, and the larger city of Sancti Spiritus, where he was born.

Four days after the first part in combat Mayajigua and then others such as Chambas, Palo Seco,[3] La Sacra, Naranjo, and Cascorro, among others.

In the midst of the difficult life in the jungle, he practiced his profession as a teacher, teaching literate peasants and freed slaves .

On 1 October 1877 he was promoted to colonel and on 18 December of that year fought his last major action in this war to the Spanish attack a convoy heading to Sancti Spiritus Fort Taguasco.

In December 1878 he began to manage with the Spanish high command a decorous exit for the then colonel Ramón Leocadio Bonachea, who was still fighting in the jurisdiction of Sancti Spíritus without any possibility of success.

He participated in the Little War together with other military leaders who opposed the Pact of Zanjón, obtaining the rank of major general.

When Carlos Roloff was granted the position of Secretary of War, he became chief of the IV Corps of the Cuban Revolutionary Army.

His advanced ideology made him not only lash out against Spanish colonial rule, but also criticized the racism and homophobia within the independence movement hoping to create a fairer Cuba.