Juan Gualberto Gómez (1854-1933)

Journalist and public man.  Born in Matanzas, July 12, he became, at an early age, active in the campaign for 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 offices 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 published La cuestión de Cuba in 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.