Cuban feminists had actively campaigned for the right to vote since the first days of the Republic. By the early 1920s, universal suffrage had become the unifying flagship issue among a full spectrum of social and political positions held by Cuban women’s associations throughout the island nation. This activism linked women to the political crisis …
Jose Martí, Cuba’s greatest hero and most influential writer. Revolutionary, poet, journalist, and the principal organizer of the Independence War of 1895-1898, he was the apostle of Cuba’s independence. Born in Havana, January 28, of a Valencian father and “isleño” mother, he spent his early years as an eager student. His environment and teachers aroused …
This Day in Cuban History – January 28, 1853. Jose Martí was born. Read More »
Born in Puerto Principe (now Camagüey), January 28, Cardinal Manuel Arteaga studied theology and civil law from 1892 at the University of Caracas, Venezuela. After his 1904 ordination he became foreign curate at Cumaná and later Canon in the Cathedral of Guyana. In 1910 he represented the Archdiocese of Caracas at the Madrid Eucharistic Congress, …
This Day in Cuban History – January 28, 1879. Cardinal Manuel Arteaga was born Read More »
On January 24, 1898, the USS Maine steamed into Havana’s Harbor, under the venerable watch of the Morro Castle and anchored close to the Spanish cruiser Alfonso XII and the Ward line steamer City of Washington. The USS Maine had been sent to protect American citizens in response to the U.S. Consul in Havana Fitzhug …
On January 22, 1896, Antonio Maceo, at the head of the Cuban forces fighting for independence, reached Mantua, Pinar del Rio, successfully completing the invasion of the Western provinces. It was an extraordinary strategic victory. The war was now to be fought in the fields of Cuba’s most profitable sugar region. The invasion, that began …
On January 18, 1934, Colonel Carlos Mendieta, a distinguished veteran of the War of Independence (1895-1898) became Cuba’s provisional president. In the turbulent and confused political period that followed the fall of Gerardo Machado (August 1933), Mendieta was succeeding Carlos Hevia, who was President of Cuba from 5 p.m. on Monday, January 15, 1934, to …
This Day in Cuban History – January 18, 1934. The Demised of the 1933 Revolution. Read More »
Rubén Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (1901-1973). President of Cuba, 1940-44 and Dictator, 1952-1958. Born in Banes, Oriente province, January 16, the son of a sugar cane cutter, he spent his early years in poverty and attended a Quaker missionary school. After leaving school he worked as a tailor’s apprentice, cane-field laborer, grocery clerk, barber, and …
Federación Estudiantil Universitaria (F.E.U.), Cuba’s first organized Students’ Federation, created in late 1922 with Julio Mella as secretary and popular figurehead, in response to the corruption and incompetence of many professors at the University of Havana. Although its first important manifesto on January 10, 1923, concerned only university issues, it was regarded as a challenge …
Spain sided with France against the United Kingdom in the Seven Year’s War. Britain declared war on Spain on January 4, 1762, and launched an Anglo-American expedition to capture Havana, the third largest city in the New World, and essential to Spanish transatlantic communications (and the supply of wealth from the Indies to Spain). On …
By the end of 1958 wholesale army desertion, growing popular unrest and violence and U.S. increasing opposition had made Fulgencio Batista’s position untenable. He resigned in the early hours of New Year’s Day and fled to the Dominican Republic. Within hours the regime collapsed and the guerrillas from the Sierra Maestra, led by Camilo Cienfuegos …
