# Juan Francisco Calcagno Monzón

**Date of birth:** June 1, 1827

**Date of death:** March 22, 1903

**Categories:** Arts, literature, educator, journalist, translator, essayist, poet, Society

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Pedagogue, journalist, translator, anthologist, lecturer, biographer, essayist, poet and, above all, prolific Cuban novelist.

Francisco Calcagno was born in Güines, La Habana, in 1827. Son of an Italian physician, he studied Philosophy and Letters at the Universidad de La Habana and expanded his education in Europe and the United States.

Upon his return, he founded in his native town the first library, printing press, language academy and the first newspaper; he became a local historian.

In La Habana, between 1864 and 1869, he was subdirector of two schools, while publishing his first books on topics of slavery and Black people in Cuba, within a broader costumbrista perspective and the comic wit that distinguishes his entire body of work: the collections Mesa revuelta (1860 and 1863), Escenas cubanas (1863), Calcañotipos o sea retratos a la pluma, por un nuevo sistema de mi invención (1864) and Poesías del negro esclavo Narciso Blanco (1864), some of which he includes in the anthology Poetas de color (1878), along with those of Plácido, Manzano and others.

After the outbreak of the first war of independence (1868-1878), he resided in Barcelona until his death, which occurred on March 22, 1903. There he drafted his most important texts, such as the Diccionario biográfico cubano (edited in Nueva York by Néstor Ponce de León, between 1878 and 1886).

Despite the well-founded objections of nineteenth-century critic and writer Manuel de la Cruz y Fernández, it subsequently became a reference work continuously consulted and cited; the Diccionario de la literatura cubana (1980) credits it among its first precedents.

As for the narrative series Uno de tantos. Novela cubana (1881), whose title changed, in the second edition, to Romualdo. Uno de tantos (1891) –still anchored in romantic codes—, it updates the theme of slavery in association with the autonomist political and cultural movement, whose campaigns seek to capitalize on abolitionist legislation for themselves. Although its artistic merits are meager, it is of interest for the attempt to penetrate the causes of marronage and banditry.

Los crímenes de Concha (published in 1887, although begun in 1883, according to the author) has a discursive kinship with his earlier narrative and is also associated with it in its structuring based on enigmas and an atmosphere of mystery, but with greater narrative complexity and an explicit rejection of romanticism. The critical recreation of traditions of African ancestry and types (such as the negro cheche and the curro del manglar), frequently treated in costumbrista articles and narratives, tends toward a reform of society in consonance with the conversion of former slaves into free citizens. Most striking are the references to the abakuá secret society (the plante ceremony, the cuarto fambá, the parla, et cetera), which, despite their superficial and prejudiced approach, are in tune with certain visions of Antonio Bachiller y Morales in Los negros (1886) and can be considered precedents of the first studies by polymath Fernando Ortiz and Alejo Carpentier's novel Écue-Yamba-O (1933).

The relatively singular feature of En busca del eslabón. Historia de monos (1888), described by Roberto Friol –in polemical dialogue with Manuel de la Cruz y Fernández—, as "our most speculative and erudite novel" of the nineteenth century, is that it inaugurates science fiction narrative on a par with naturalism, a creative method upon which metatextual reflections are made. The caricatural procedure in the characters relates this novel to Ramón Meza's Mi tío el empleado (1887). Despite Calcagno's adherence to positivist theories, he disagrees with theses of racial and cultural superiority that underpin the enslavement of ethnocultural communities considered inferior or barbaric. He seeks to integrate a diversity of landscapes, human groups and customs, and attempts to present them in a holistic manner.

Apart from these three novels and S. I. Novela cubana histórica (1896, reissued in 1916) –which maintains intertextual links with the foundational poem Espejo de Paciencia (1608), by Silvestre de Balboa–, less relevant are Historia de un muerto y noticias del otro mundo (1875), published in 1898 with the title Historia de un muerto. Meditaciones sobre las ruinas de un hombre; Las Lazo (1893), reissued in 1896 with the title Mina. La hija del presidiario. Novela cubana histórica; Don Enriquito. Novela histórica cubana (1895), reissued in 1897 and 1899 with the title Un casamiento misterioso (Misiú Enriquito). Novela cubana; and El emisario. Novela cubana (1896).

Among his political texts, while he writes El catecismo autonomista o la autonomía al alcance de todos (1887), in order to popularize that ideology, he later publishes La República, única salvación de la familia cubana (1898).

Another dimension of his writing manifests itself in the Apuntes biográficos del ilustre sabio cubano Tranquilino Sandalio de Noda (1891) and Aponte (1901).