Juan Gualberto Gómez (1854-1933). Journalist and public figure. Born in Matanzas, July 12, he became, at an early age, active in the campaign for Cuban independence. He went to Paris and studied engineering, but, needing an income, became a journalist. He traveled as a teacher through the French West Indies and Mexico, returning to the editorial office of La Discusión, before spending nearly ten years in Madrid where he directed the dailies El Pueblo and El Progreso and edited La Tribuna. An advocate of the betterment of the Blacks, he became secretary of the Madrid abolitionist society, and publishedLa cuestión de Cuba en 1884 (1885), Las islas Carolina y Marianas (1885), and La isla de Puerto Rico (1891).
He returned to join the Independence War of 1895-1898 and was deported in 1897 for his part in the insurrection of Ibarra. He was a member of the Constituent Convention of 1900, secretary of the Advisory Law Commission, an editor of La Lucha, and from 1913 a senator. Within the Partido Liberal, he was a partisan of Zayas.
Jaime Suchlicki is Director of the Cuban Studies Institute, CSI, a non-profit research group in Coral Gables, FL. He is the author of Cuba: From Columbus to Castro & Beyond, now in its 5th edition; Mexico: From Montezuma to the Rise of the PAN, 2nd edition, and of the recently published Breve Historia de Cuba.
