Desiderio Fajardo Ortiz

Cuban journalist, writer, and pedagogue. He collaborated with the Necessary War (1895). He used the pseudonym "El cautivo".

He was born in Santiago de Cuba. He completed his primary studies at the El Divino Maestro school.

The Ten Years' War soon forced the family to expatriate to Cartagena, where they remained for several years. While there, the young man was wounded and lost the use of his legs, his mobility becoming limited by the use of a wheelchair.

He traveled through Central America and the United States (1885-1893). In San José de Costa Rica he married Valentina Poppe. In Guatemala he founded an opposition newspaper, for which reason the president of the nation expelled him.

In Nicaragua he lived for several years, devoted to the teaching profession and met Rubén Darío. At the beginning of the 1895 campaign he was appointed secret agent of the Cuban Revolution in Santiago de Cuba. He emigrated to New York in 1898. Until his death he worked as a pedagogue at the Centro de Instrucción, in Santiago de Cuba.

In Cartagena de Indias he founded and directed the newspaper "El Porvenir". He also founded the magazine "El Mercurio" (Santiago de Cuba, 1882) and directed "El Diario Cojuelo" (1885). He wrote liberal articles in the newspapers "El Derecho", "El Eco de Cuba" and others. In 1885 he emigrated again.
He edited, together with Manuel Navarro Riera, "El Cubano Libre" (Santiago de Cuba, 1904).

Speech delivered at Chickering Hall on the evening of November 27, 1897 at the commemorative evening organized by the Óscar Primelles Professional Club in honor of medical students executed in Havana. New York, Imp. de A. W. Howes, 1897.

"The Escape of Evangelina", One-act play in four scenes, by El cautivo (pseud.). Written expressly for the amateur group of the girls' club "Las Dos Banderas" and premiered at the "Carnegie Lyceum" on January 22, 1898 [In verse]. New York, A. W. Howes publishing house, 1898.

"Homeland and Art" (Articles, speeches and verses). Prol. by N. C. Havana, Imp. La Prueba, 1916.

He died in the town of Cubitas, near Santiago de Cuba, on January 23, 1905.