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'Máximo Gómez y Báez' (18 November, 1836 in the Dominican Republic - 17 June, 1905 in Havana, Cuba) was a Major General in the Ten Years' War (1868-1878) and Cuba's military commander in that country's War of Independence (1895-1898).
Gómez was born in the town of Baní, in the province of Peravia, in the Dominican Republic .When he was a teenager, he joined in the battles against the Haitian invasions of Faustine Soulouque in the 1850's. He was trained as an officer of the Spanish Army . at the Zaragoza Military Academy and originally arrived in Cuba as a cavalry officer - a Colonel - in the Spanish Army and fought along side the Spanish forces in the Dominican Annexation War (1861-1865). After the Spanish forces were defeated and fled the Dominican Republic in 1865 by order of Queen Isabel II, many supporters of the Annexionist cause left with them, and Maximo Gomez moved to his family to Cuba in disgrace.
He retired from the Spanish Army and took up the rebel cause in 1868, helping transform the Cuban Army's military tactics and strategy from the conventional approach favored by Thomas Jordan and others. He gave the Cuban ''Mambises'' their most feared tactic: The "Machete Charge".
On October 26, 1868 at Pinos de Baire, Gomez led a Machete Charge on foot, ambushing a Spanish column and obliterating it. The Spanish Army was terrified of these charges because the majority were infantry troops, mainly conscripts, who were fearful of being cut down by the machetes. Because the Cuban Army always lacked sufficient munitions, the usual combat technique was to shoot once and then charge the Spanish Infantry Squares.
In 1871 Gómez led a campaign to clear Guantánamo from forces loyal to Spain. The rich coffee growers, mostly of French descent, opposed Cuban independence because their ancestors had fled Haiti after the Haitians ousted the French.
Gómez carried out a bloody but successful campaign, and most of his officers went on to become high ranking officers, including Antonio and José Maceo, Adolfo Flor Crombet, Policarpo Pineda "Rustán", and many others.
Following the death in combat of Major General Ignacio Agramonte y Loynáz in May 1873, Gómez assumed the command of the military district of the province of Camaguey and its famed Cavalry Corps. Upon first inspecting the corps he concluded they were the best trained and disciplined in the Cuban Army.
Gómez rose to the rank of Generalísimo of the Cuban Army - a rank akin to that of Captain General or in modern terms that of General of the Army - due to his superior military leadership.
He adapted and formalized the improvised military tactics that had first been used by Spanish Guerrilas against Napoleon Bonaparte's Armies into a cohesive and comprehensive system at both the tactical and strategic level. The concept of insurrection and insurgency, and the asymmetric nature thereof can be traced intellectually to him.
He was shot in the neck in 1875, while crossing the fortified line or ''Trocha'' from Júcaro in the south to Morón in the North; while leading the failed attempt to invade Western Cuba. After that he always wore a kerchief around his neck. His second and last wound came in 1896 while fighting in the rural areas outside Havana while completing a successful invasion of Western Cuba.
He was wounded only twice during 15 years of guerilla warfare against an enemy far superior in manpower and logistics. In contrast, his most trusted officer and second-in-command, Lt. General Antonio Maceo y Grajales, was shot 27 times in the same span of time, with number 26 being the mortal wound. Gómez' son and Maceo's aide-de-camp, Francisco Gómez y Toro - nicknamed "Panchito" - was killed trying to recover Maceo's dead body, in combat December 7, 1896.
At the end of the Cuban Independence War in 1898 he retired to a villa outside of Havana. He refused the presidential nomination that was offered to him in 1901, and which he was expected to win unopposed, mainly because he always disliked politics and after 40 years of living in Cuba he still felt that being Dominican-born he should not be the civil leader of Cuba.
He died in his villa in 1905 and was interred in the Colon Cemetery, Havana.
Maximo Gomez Park, a park in Miami, Florida, United States, – better known as Domino Park – was named in his honor.
Gómez's portrait graces Cuban currency on the 10 pesos bill.