1 Peso Carlos Manuel de Céspedes

Carlos Manuel de Céspedes freed his slaves and rang the bell at La Demajagua on October 10, 1868, triggering the Ten Years' War against Spanish colonial rule — an ultimately unsuccessful but foundational conflict in Cuban independence history. This coin was issued nearly a century later under Castro's government, which consistently mined the independence struggles of the 19th century for revolutionary legitimacy. Céspedes had been dead for over a hundred years, but his political usefulness was very much alive.