Caribbean P-88b 1956 or P-88c 1958 10 pesos VF Very Fine—Pink, Gear Wheels

La Demajagua

Demajagua (deh-muh-HAH-gwuh), the name of the plantation, means in the indigenous Arawak/Taíno language "place of the majagua tree" (Hibiscus elatus et al.), a hardwood whose inner bark yields strong fibers used for rope, hammocks, and cordage. 

Originally a 19th-century steam-powered sugar mill complex, La Demajagua's owner Carlos Manuel de Cέsρεdεs (1819-1874) is potrayed on this banknote. The comple was dominated by its industrial heart: massive cast-iron gear wheels, flywheels, and shafts that once transferred the force of the steam engine to the crushing rollers. Sugar cane entered between the vertical mills, juice flowed to the boiling house, and the great bell regulated the entire rhythm of plantation life—work hours, shifts, and emergencies.

On 10 October 1868 that same bell was rung for a different purpose. Instead of calling labor, it summoned the people of the estate. The owner proclaimed the end of their bondage and invited them to take up arms against the troops of the Spanish colonizer. The industrial machinery of sugar suddenly became a backdrop to a political and moral rupture: a factory of exploitation transformed into a cradle of revolt.

Within days, the newly formed, poorly armed column—many carrying machetes rather than rifles—marched from the plantation toward the nearest town. There they met seasoned colonial troops. The clash that followed, remembered as the first pitched engagement of the war, was chaotic and unequal: cavalry charges, musket fire, machete assaults at close range. The rebels were forced to withdraw, but the psychological barrier had been broken. The uprising was no longer a proclamation; it had become a war.

That is why the banknote shows not only pastoral scenery but also heavy cogwheels and mill components: they are not decorative. They symbolize the transformation of an industrial sugar complex into the mechanical starting point of a national revolution—iron teeth that once ground cane, now standing for the moment history itself was set in motion.