This passionate call to patriots to do battle to the death against tyrants was addressed to the Greeks, thousands of miles away, and the tyrants against whom it raged were Moslem Turks, hated by all true Spaniards; wherefore the Spanish censor permitted it to be published freely in Cuba. But every Cuban patriot read in it "Cubans" for "Greeks" and "Spaniards" for "Moslems." Luaces was the author of a number of meritorious dramas.
We have spoken of Doña Louisa Perez as probably the foremost of Cuba's women poets. Her chief rival for that distinction was Doña Gertrudis Gomez de Avellanda, a woman of real genius. But she, although born in Camaguey, was for practically all her life so identified with Spain that she is commonly regarded as a Spaniard rather than a Cuban. Born in 1814, she went to Spain with her mother in 1836, and there remained until 1860. By that time she had gained world-wide reputation as a poet and dramatist, and also as a writer of prose fiction, and on her return to Cuba she was publicly greeted as though she were a queen or an empress. A few months later she hastened back to Spain and there spent the remainder of her life. Only a few of her writings were on Cuban themes, but they indicated that she retained in her voluntary exile a deep love for and sympathy with her native land.
The successor of Domingo Del Monte as a patron of Cuban letters was Nicolas Azcarate, a very wealthy lawyer of Havana, himself a writer and orator of great power, and an ardent patriot, though generally inclined toward reforms and autonomy rather than independence. He was the leader of that "Committee of Information" which went to Spain in 1865 to lay before the Spanish Minister for the Colonies, Canovas del Castillo, the grievances and the demands of Cuba; a mission which was quite fruitless, for it was quickly followed by the outbreak of the Ten Years' War. Azcarate also founded and conducted at his own cost a newspaper at Havana, _La Voz del Siglo_, to advocate reforms and autonomy. But he lost popularity with the Cubans, who were by this time almost unanimous for independence, while he could not command the favor of the Spaniards; and in consequence he lost his influence, his fortune and his place in society, and ended his life in obscurity and poverty.