Carlos Alberto Boissier

Poet born in Matanzas, they called him the Mambí Poet. He was known as Bolito and used the pseudonym Oscar.

He was born in Matanzas on September 10, 1877. He completed his early studies at the Matanzas school El Amigo de la Infancia. Later, in 1893, he graduated with a bachelor's degree from the Instituto of the same city. Revolutionary journalist who during his brief exile in Tampa collaborated in El Expedicionario and in Patria.

In 1894 he was appointed clerk and librarian of the Liceo de Matanzas library. That same year he performed as an actor in his work Bolitoneida, a tragicomic monologue in a single scene with a single character staged at the Liceo. There he held the position of secretary of the Declamation Section. In February 1896 he emigrated to Tampa. In May of that same year he arrived on the shores of Cuba with the Bermuda expedition, which failed completely.

He collaborated with poems in La Aurora de Yumurí, Artes y Letras, El Álbum de las Damas, El Fígaro, La Habana Elegante. He used the pseudonym Oscar and was known by Bolito. In early 1897, enrolled in the Three Friends expedition, he arrived at the north coast of Pinar del Río. Shortly after he fell ill and was discovered by the Spanish, who killed him with machete blows.

Works
In exile, 1896
For the homeland, 1896
Behind the flag, 1897
Resurrection

Shortly after arriving in Cuba, in an expedition that landed in Pinar del Río to join the Liberating Army, the young poet Carlos Alberto Boissier dies. He died on March 10, 1897 in Pinar del Río.

To have been a patriot is already a condition that ennobles the human being. That his mambí blood was shed in the fields where Cuban freedom was being forged in the nineteenth century is an honor. Being a poet distinguished him, because it denotes special sensitivity, the pursuit of perfection, and patient work. To die young, very young, is a great and lamentable sorrow. These circumstances came together in the personality of Carlos Alberto Boissier, another of the numerous writers of the nineteenth century whom time and oblivion have buried into injustice.

His most outstanding work belongs to the generation of writers and, specifically, of poets of the war. His name shines with its own light alongside those of Pedro Figueredo, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Miguel Gerónimo Gutiérrez, Antonio Hurtado del Valle, Ramón Roa, Diego Vicente Tejera, Enrique Hernández Miyares, Bartolomé Masó Márquez, Francisco Sellén, Enrique Loynaz del Castillo, Federico and Carlos Pío Urhbach, José Silvestre, Manuel Castellano Abreu and Aurelia Castillo de González.

According to the renowned poet and essayist Roberto Manzano—laureate with the Nicolás Guillén, La Rosa Blanca, and Samuel Feijóo prizes—the lyric poetry that colored the years of the War of Independence in Cuba was more than a literary movement; it emerged from the need to express patriotic feelings, not only with the force of the machete but also with the creative conviction of those who marched to the brush with a single desire: to free their land from colonial affront.

"From all social sources, rapid and flowing verse accrued to the long and violent process of forging, cheering, witnessing, pushing. Verse helped in the brush for survival, to thread together wills, to clarify strategies, to compensate for losses, to stimulate triumphs, to bind wounds, to resurrect the dead. Three Cubans under a branch, and already verse grew from their lips, pushed by the weathered hands of the machete. Four stools under a blanket strumming their guitars in the distant night of the coast, and already the expeditioners could be seen arriving in the verse, entering famished into the camps, rejoicing in the wild ring of encounters. Verse represented everything when in Cuba it was shed in the open air to plant in the wind the newly embroidered flag."

In accentuated rhyme, Carlos Alberto Boissier sang to his homeland and suffered exile:

Oh, how sad, how sad is my life;
thinking breaks me and crushes me;
I only think of the beloved land,
where I have my home and my beloved!
In the warmth of happiness, my mind
forged a thousand dreams of love,
and a country of magnificent air
saturated with the essence of flowers.
I was then a feverish visionary,
dazzled by vivid reflections,
and could not see the Calvary
that raised its peak in the distance.
Today cruel sorrow kills me,
and I see the near horizon darkly
that casts its shadow in the sky
and wraps the mountain's summit.
Our homeland calls us to fight,
and casting away the sorrow that crushes me,
I offer it my blood and my life
to the distant and beloved land
where I have my home and my beloved!

(Fragments from "In exile", 1896)

Boissier was not only a man of struggle but also of great passions of love:

In a bedroom that smells of flowers
I would wish to enjoy your love
with the delights of passion,
and between kisses and caresses
I would teach you the thousand delights
that my heart keeps hidden.

The above is the first stanza of a long poem of his titled "For my beloved," dated 1896, when Carlos Alberto Boissier was only 19 years old and life still appeared luminous to him.

Born in Matanzas on September 10, 1877, Carlos Alberto completed his early studies at the school El Amigo de la Infancia in his native city. Without leaving the land that served as his cradle, he graduated with a bachelor's degree and in 1894 was appointed clerk and librarian of the Liceo de Matanzas library. It was then that he performed as an actor in his work ¡Bolitoneida!, a monologue of a single scene and a single character, of a tragicomic nature, which would leave him with the affectionate nickname "Bolito," which he gladly answered to when heard in the voice of his friends.

In the very Liceo that saw him perform his work he also held the position of secretary of the Declamation section and must have been one of the young men most beloved for his aptitude for the arts, bearing, charisma, and if that were not enough, his facility for rubbing shoulders with the muses. His collaborations would soon appear in La Aurora del Yumurí, Artes y Letras, El Álbum de las Damas, El Fígaro, and La Habana Elegante.

In February 1896 he emigrated to the American city of Tampa, and barely three months had passed when he enlisted in an expedition to return to his homeland in favor of the just libertarian cause. During this brief stay in the United States—his friend and critic José Manuel Carbonell affirms—"[…] he wrote his best poems, soaked in love, full of patriotism and brimming with premonitions that fatefully came to pass." These poems were published in the magazine El Expedicionario and complement the two facets of the poet, namely, amorous and revolutionary lyric. In the northern nation he also collaborated in the newspaper Patria of the Cuban Revolutionary Party.

The aforementioned 1896 expedition failed, but Boissier along with the rest of the patriots did not cease in their effort and a year later, after long nights of meetings to finalize details and with the valuable collaboration of emigrated Cubans, the independence fighters enlisted, in early 1897, aboard the Three Friends, which defied the turbulent waters and icy winds to carry supplies of war to the north coast of the western province of Pinar del Río.

Once on land and ready for combat, the young soldier suffered the nefarious consequences of the low temperatures of exile and the scorching humidity of the tropics. He quickly fell ill in the insurgent brush until discovered by colonial forces, who gave him a cruel and cowardly death on March 10, 1897. Six months separated the mambí poet from reaching 20 years of age.

Carlos Alberto Boissier, in his short existence, left an abundant sample of his work. To say that his death cut short a talented career in letters and a life of unforeseeable accomplishments may seem commonplace in these cases, but it is inevitable for us to say so.

Upon leaving his native Matanzas in 1896, the poet wrote: "[…] your memory, oh Cuba!, will never be erased from my memory."