Vice-president of the rebel government during the Independence War, 1895-1898 and then briefly president, October 10-December 31, 1898. Born in Manzanillo, Oriente province, he served as assistant to General Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y del Castillo during the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878), becoming the rebels’ secretary of war. He was captured in the Guerra Chiquita …
Independent leader and statesman, born February 10 in Camagüey to the wealthy Agustín Cisneros Quesada, Marquis of Santa Lucia, and Ángela Gregoria Betancourt y Betancourt. As a young man he was imprisoned in Spain for his support of the independence movement of Joaquín de Agüero. He led the conspiracy in Camagüey, which culminated in the …
Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, Marqués de Santa Lucía (1828-1914) Read More »
Padre de la Patria (“Father of our Country”), lawyer and revolutionary, who began the Ten Years’ War for Independence in 1868, and the following year became the president of a provisional government. Born April 18, in Bayamo to a wealthy landowner, he attended secondary school in Havana, and then the University of Havana. Returning home to …
Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y del Castillo (1819-1874) Read More »
Poet and journalist, born in the Matanzas suburb of Pueblo Nuevo on March 3. He first appeared in print at 16 when some of his verses were published in a local weekly, La Primavera. He entered journalism as an associate of veteran writer Fernando Romero Fajardo, director of the Ateneo society. He then joined the editorial …
As a tobacco worker in Florida during the 1890s, he represented the escogedores (tobacco leaf selectors) in the Cuban independence movement and directed Tampa’s La Tribuna del pueblo. A follower of Martí, in 1892 he signed the Bases, a document outlining the ideas and program of Martí’s Partido Revolucionario Cubano. After Independence, Baliño moved to Cuba. Although originally a believer …
A Creole planter and economist who co-founded, with Captain General Luis de Las Casas, the influential Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País, the Consulado de Agricultura y Comercio de La Habana (to further the sugar growers’ interests), and the Papel periódico, Cuba’s first nenwspaper. The Haitian revolution, which destroyed that country’s sugar industry, broke out when …
Brother-in-law of Domingo del Monte and the most famous member of a prominent sugar planter family (Domingo de Aldama was his father). By the 1860s the Aldamas were firmly entrenched in the hierarchy of the sugar industry. They tried unsuccessfully to run some of their mills with only white labor, since legal slavery was in its final …
A Camagüey-born revolutionary, he lived and studied in Havana until his father fell ill and he had to return to run the family business. Early in life he showed his liberal ideas by founding a free school for the poor in Guáimaro and freeing his slaves. This led the authorities to place him under surveillance. Nevertheless, he became …
Philanthropist. Born in Santa Clara to a very wealthy family, she believed that great wealth implied a duty and should be used for social welfare. She paid for the construction of a large theater in Santa Clara and donated it to the city so that the income would support schools and facilities for the poor. She not only …
Marta Abreu (Marta Abreu y Arencibia de Estévez, 1846-1909) Read More »
Born in Matanzas province, December 17, his family took him to the United States on the outbreak of the Ten Years’ War and thence to Mexico, where his father settled as a sugar planter. When he was 13, he was sent to the United States for his education. Soon after his 1888 graduation from Cornell University as …
