Carlos Genaro Valdés

From his youth he was linked to typography, first as a typesetter in a printing shop and later as a writer, director, editor or contributor to magazines and newspapers. He compiled his own poems, along with those of Fornaris, Luaces, Milanés, Teúrbe Tolón and other renowned poets.

As director of the newspaper El Palenque Literario he drafted some chronicles in which he noted that the poet Plácido, condemned to death and executed in 1845, was innocent, which led him to a judicial trial in which José Antonio Cortina, the prominent orator and Matanzas journalist, acted as his defender. Carlos Genaro Valdés is credited with a select collection of Cuban songs.

He was a writer for La Infancia, El Eco de las Damas, El Hogar and El Volteriano. In Havana he established the printing shop La Idea, where he edited the newspaper of the same name.

Under the title Rasgos de Emilio Castelar he published in 1873 a collection of the most notable thoughts of this author. He used the pseudonym Justino, a name he had adopted in freemasonry.