Narciso López
| Narciso López | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Narciso López de Urriola November 2, 1797 Caracas, Captaincy General of Venezuela |
| Died | September 1, 1851 (aged 53) Havana, Captaincy General of Cuba |
| Known for | Designing the modern Flag of Cuba |
Narciso López (Caracas, November 2, 1797 – Havana, September 1, 1851) was a Venezuelan adventurer and soldier, best known for an expedition aimed at liberating Cuba from Spain in the 1850s. His troops carried a flag that López had designed, which later became the flag of modern Cuba.
Narciso López was born in Caracas, Venezuela, to a wealthy merchant family of Basque origin; his father was Pedro Manuel Lopez and his mother was Ana Paula de Oriola (sometimes spelt Urriola). He is known to have had at least one sister. As a young teenager, he was forcibly recruited in 1814 by the ruthless Spanish general José Tomás Boves from the ranks of the defeated independence forces abandoned by a fleeing Simón Bolívar at the city of Valencia.
When still a young man, he fought for the Spanish, at the Battle of Queseras del Medio (1819), and Carabobo (1821) against the forces for independence led by Simón Bolívar, José Antonio Páez and others.
When the Spanish army withdrew in defeat to Cuba after the decisive Battle of Lake Maracaibo (1823), López, who had fought in this battle, left with them as did many other survivors including Calixto Garcia de Luna e Izquierdo, who would be grandfather of Cuban Independence major general Calixto Garcia. In 1825 in Cuba he married the sister of the Count of Pozos Dulces, Maria Dolores with whom he had a son. Narciso López who had earned the rank of colonel in Venezuela at the early age of twenty-one, fought in the First Carlist War. After the war, López continued to serve the Spanish government in several administrative posts, including the Cortes for the city of Seville and as military governor in Madrid. López moved to Cuba as an assistant to the new capitan general, but lost his post when the governorship changed hands in 1843. After failing in a few business ventures, he became a partisan of the anti-Spanish faction in Cuba. In 1848, during a Spanish arrest of Cuban revolutionaries, López fled to the United States.
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Wikipedia