A poet of the negrismo school who later became a leader of the Partido Socialista Popular. He obtained a doctorate of Civil and public law at the University of Havana, took part in the Protesta de los Trece, and was elected first vice-president of Falange de Acción Cubana. This involvement led to his arrest in May 1923. He edited the magazine Venezuela libre, which became América libre. He was elected deputy of the school of lawyers of Havana and designated member of the national code commission. He was a founder of the Hispanic-American cultural institute, of which he was vice-president. In 1927 he married María Josefa Vidaurreta. He published his first book of poetry, Liberación, in Madrid. Later, he became a professor at the University of Havana’s institute of modern languages, where he participated in the student demonstrations against the Gerardo Machado regime and was held awaiting trial for two months in the Castillo del Príncipe. There he published his essay Sobre la inquietud cubana and joined the editorial board of Revista política. After serving a six-month sentence, he went into exile in Mexico until Machado’s fall, and was then exiled again for his role as editor of Diario La Palabra.
He participated in the first congress of revolutionary artists and writers of Mexico. By then he was an avowed Marxist and member of the Unión Revolucionaria Comunistaand in 1938-1948 he was the party’s candidate for alcalde of Havana. In 1957 he became head of the successor Partido Socialista Popular, articulating its disapproval of barrack assaults as a way to dislodge Batista. He described the PSP’s position as the mass struggle and mobilizing the proletariat toward national elections. In 1962 he was named rector of the University of Havana. A year later he was replaced, but in 1962-77 he received many honors: PhD honoris causa from Prague’s Charles University, appointment in 1963 as Cuba’s permanent delegate to UNESCO and professor emeritus of the University of Havana. The Confederación de Trabajadores de Cuba awarded him its May Day distinction, in recognition of his life’s work for socialism. His works include Literatura hispano-americana; Maceo: líder y masa; and Momento español.
