In 1865, the writer Luis Victoriano Betancourt published a prose poem titled “To Die for the Fatherland!” It appeared in the workers’ newspaper La Aurora and was likely read out loud in cigar factories. Three years later, Betancourt would participate in the Constitutional Assembly at Guáimaro and even take up arms against the Spanish. So how was he able to publish his incendiary poem under the Spanish censor’s nose? And why historians ignored it, even though they have extensively studied the publication in which it appeared?