Abstract
The purpose of this work is to present how the war in Cuba served to re-educate and
redeem those men who had somehow resisted adapting to the modern virile archetype. Both
the army of Spain and the United States employed reductional practices and uses in their
armies that were aimed at implementing a hegemonic virile image among their members.
The sources used to nurture this work are the study on the suicide of the sociologist Emile
Durkheim, the novel El Separatista [The secessionist] of the writer Eduardo López Bago and
the memoirs of Theodore Roosevelt as he passed through Cuba when he served as Assistant
Secretary of the Navy during the conflict and the memoirs of the military Rafael Montalvo
Morales upon entering to direct the Havana prison. In addition, the Archive of The Hispanic
Society of New York has been consulted.