Name Calixto de | ||
Calixto Garcia de Luna e Izquierdo was born in Soria, Castilla somewhere around 1768. He went to Valencia, Venezuela where he was a merchant. There he married Maria de los Angeles Gonzalez, said to be the daughter of an Indigenous Chief (Hija de Cacique). They had numerous children, both boys and girls.
Garcia de Luna fought on the Spanish side in the Battle of Carabobo, against Simón Bolívar and the British Legions, during Venezuelan War of Independence in 1821.
After the defeat, where he lost one arm, he went to Cuba with the rest of Spanish army. His son Ramon Garcia Gonzalez was the father of the Ten Year War, the Guerra Chiquita and Second War of Independence hero General Calixto Garcia Iňiguez. Some have speculated with reason, but without apparent evidence, that Ramon was his middle name which he could have written as was custom of the time as "C. Ramon Garcia de Luna e Izquierdo: and he was the Ramon Garcia who officered Spanish troops at Carabobo. Another theory is that he was related to Spanish military leader Manuel Garcia de Luna.
Much mystery surrounds Calixto Garcia de Luna e Izquierdo. It is not understood why he left his wife and daughters in Venezuela and why he arrived in Cuba in 1831 about ten years after the Carabobo defeat. It is known by court documents that his son Ramon Garcia Gonzalez bitterly opposed his grandson's (Calixto Garcia Iñiguez) marriage to Isabel Velez Cabrera; perhaps because Isabel did not have personal fortune, and she was born in the Taino town of Jiguani.
Given Calixto Garcia de Luna's apparently newly learned independentist leanings which put him in jail, some have speculated he had become changed by the war. Given that both he and Narciso López were neighbors in Valencia, Venezuela and both were originally members of the Spanish Armies who turned against Spanish rule, it is possible that he conspired with Narciso López in Lopez's failed attempts to throw the Spanish out of Cuba. However, for some unknown reason, Lopez decided to make his last landing in Western Cuba, rather than in the more mountainous eastern end of the Island where the Calixto Garcia de Luna had settled.