The flag that Cubans identify as their own — that of Narciso López, first raised in Cárdenas in 1850 — was not the first symbol of emancipation that existed on the island. According to the Cuban historian Maikel Arista-Salado, this place is occupied by a set of banners related to the conspiracy of José Antonio Aponte in 1812, decades before López designed the flag that is now recognized worldwide as the flag of Cuba.
Among the documents confiscated from Aponte by the Spanish colonial authorities were a banner featuring the Virgin of the Assumption and Ethiopian flags, known as those of Abyssinia.
Arista-Salado explains the reason for that symbolic choice: "The first Cuban independence flags were the flag of Abyssinia, that is, the flag of Black Ethiopia, because, of course, Aponte, who was a mixed-race or Black man, saw Ethiopia as the paradigm, as it was the only Christian nation at that time."
Aponte was a free Black man, a carpenter, and a member of the Battalion of Loyal Morenos in Havana. His movement, organized between 1811 and 1812, combined opposition to Spanish rule with the abolition of slavery and the aspiration for a political order favorable to both free and enslaved Black people. He was executed by hanging on April 9, 1812.
The finding has a significant historiographical component. The complete files of the process have only been accessible to researchers in recent years. "These files have only been known for about 10 years, perhaps. And of course, vexillology has not yet addressed this," warns Arista-Salado, emphasizing that "we always think that the independence movement comes from the white criollos, and in the end, Aponte, a Black man, is the one who raises the first flag."
Before the flags of Narciso López and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, there was also the project of Joaquín Infante, a lawyer from Bayamo who, around 1810, proposed a horizontal tricolor flag in green, purple, and white for an independent Cuba. This design was included in a separatist constitutional project published in Caracas in 1812, although it never flew as a symbol of a Cuban state.
Arista-Salado points out that the oldest flag to fly in Cuba was, in fact, the Burgundian flag — the saltire of Saint Andrew, a symbol of the Hispanic Monarchy — predating all independence movements.
"The oldest flag we have is the Burgundian one, for example, which is the flag of the crosses and, of course, was a Cuban flag before that of Narciso López."
The historian points out that this ignorance is not accidental. The Cuban nationalist narrative has systematically excluded figures that do not fit its mold. "In the Cuban nationalist discourse, it does not fit that a person from Barcelona, a Catalan, gave his life for the independence of Cuba." He is referring to Ramón Pintó y Llinás, a Barcelonan executed in 1855 for independentist conspiracy, whose story remains outside the official canon. The same is true for Narciso López himself — a Venezuelan — and Joaquín de Agüero y Agüero.
"It has to be a Cuban born in Bayamo in order to fit in," summarizes Arista-Salado, who concludes that this requirement is "the reason why Pinto and Llinás are not studied in Cuba, why Narciso López is not studied," nor other figures who "unfortunately either were not born in the right place or had inclinations that were not entirely independentist."
The debate highlights that the Cuban independence movement was plural and multiethnic from its origins, and that the official history has favored a narrow narrative that leaves uncomfortable protagonists in the shadows. The flag of Narciso López, which ultimately became the national symbol when adopted by the Guáimaro Assembly in 1869, was only the last chapter of a much longer and more diverse story.
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