Antonio Guiteras Font

Outstanding educator and director of Colegio La Empresa. He was also a mentor to young people who fought for Cuba's independence.

Antonio Guiteras Font was born in Matanzas, in the spacious mansion on Río Street, number 9. He completed his elementary studies in Matanzas. He then attended Colegio San Cristóbal de Carraguao, directed by José de la Luz y Caballero, where he was a student and classmate of other young people, future promises of the Nation.

In 1841 he obtained his law degree from the University of La Habana, a profession he never practiced as he dedicated himself solely to teaching. After graduating and together with his brother Eusebio Guiteras he traveled to Europe and Asia in order to study the most modern educational systems and to test them in Cuba. He then resided for several months in Paris, one of the centers of learning in that era.

He returns to Cuba in the 1840s and settles again in Matanzas. There he married Teresa Gener y Puñales, who became the mother of his 13 children.

He was not in Cuba when Colegio La Empresa was founded, which responded to the desire of the bourgeoisie to educate their children carefully. In 1852 he assumes the direction of that school in place of his brother Eusebio Guiteras, a position he held until 1869. Under his guidance the school reaches its highest point of pedagogical and social development, ranking among the highest educational institutions in the country.

Together with his brothers he joined the radical group of liberal reformers from Matanzas linked to the processes that were beginning to develop in Cuba. This attitude made him the center of attention of Spanish authorities.

The liberal ideas of the professors at Colegio La Empresa, their influence on the students and society of the time, the prestige of the Guiteras family and the fame they had held for years as enemies of the Spanish regime, led to Antonio Guiteras being considered an enemy of Spanish authorities and intensified his persecution.

It is for this reason that Antonio Guiteras Font was forced to resign from the direction of the school, but he remained in Cuba. The main reason that kept him there was the problem of his son José Guiteras Gener, arrested and sentenced to prison for participating in the second expedition of the Galvanic. It was not until January 1869 that he took steps and managed to have his son deported to Spain.

When his son José Guiteras Gener escapes to France and then to the United States of America, his father follows him and settles there with his family.

He dies with full clarity of mind in 1901 at the age of 82.

He was a celebrated Latinist and gained considerable fame with his translation of Virgil's Aeneid, made in Barcelona in 1884. He published numerous articles in magazines and newspapers in Madrid, the United States of America, and Cuba. Nevertheless, his most enduring work was his educational labor, which he carried out mainly during the period when he directed Colegio La Empresa.