Enrique Gay Calbó

Cuban writer, lawyer, and historian. Member of the first republican generation and a bridge figure with the most distinguished Cuban literary figures who emerged in it toward the end of the 1920s.

He was born in the city of Holguín, current province of the same name, in the north of the eastern zone of Cuba. His father was a Spaniard who arrived on the Island during the Ten Years' War, and his mother was a Creole from a family rooted in Santiago de Cuba.

He received part of his early education in the city of Manzanillo (current Granma province), where his father had settled after leaving the militia for administration to undertake commercial ventures. With high ranks within freemasonry, his father provided his son with secular education in schools run not by Spaniards, but by Creoles.

By 1901 he had already been orphaned, having to help support his family, which led him to perform the most humble tasks; among them, work as a messenger and shop clerk. Nevertheless, at 18 years old he began his career in journalism at the newspaper La Independencia of Santiago de Cuba.

His first intellectual inclinations were directed toward literature, and it is known that he wrote at least two novels. As founder of the magazine Renacimiento (1910-1912), editor-in-chief of Orto Literario (1910), and promoter along with José Francisco Sariol of Orto, he became a bridge figure in the modernist renewal promoted by the Guantanamese Regino E. Boti in poetry, the Santiaguean José Manuel Poveda, and the Matancero Agustin Acosta.

He is included in the first original manifestation of this republican generation, in rejection of the new insular evolution derived from the events of the republic of 1902, which did not correspond with the independence ideals for which they had fought.

An action aimed at greater influence of intellectuals in the country's social and political life was undertaken around 1910, when he participated in the call made by Jesús Castellanos to create the Society of Conferences, which he founded together with the Dominican intellectual, residing in Cuba, Pedro Henríquez Ureña.

Within the same trend opened by Castellanos, the magazine Cuba Contemporánea was framed, to which he joined as a contributor, taking charge, around 1919, of its Bibliographic Section, when Henríquez Ureña ceased this work.

He deployed a most important work as a critic of books appearing in Cuba from American countries. A task that led him to delve deeper into continental problems and become acquainted with the predominant ideological forces at those moments. His work at Cuba Contemporánea extended to his role as chief and secretary of the editorial board.

In 1925 he earned his doctorate in Law from the University of Havana, but already, from two years before, he figured among the members of the Cuban Society of International Law, subsequently serving as legal consultant to the Department of State (1929), specialized in international problems. His articles on these matters appeared in the Yearbook of the Society of International Law.

In 1925 he published his work Defenseless America: American Intervention in Central America, which achieved true notoriety. He substantiated with figures and arguments that America found itself more unprotected than in Bolívar's century, which is why it was urgent to remedy this evil through the sincere word of union, affection, and fraternity.

Without having active participation in the events that culminated in the overthrow of Gerardo Machado's government, and without affiliating with the Minorista Group, he integrated the intellectual projects in which members of the first and second republican generations coincided. In the 1930s he began to collaborate in Revista de La Habana, in which he shared editorial responsibility with Antonio Sánchez de Bustamante, Antonio Fernández de Castro, Luis Gómez Wangüemert, Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, and José Zacarías Tallet, among others. His works on contemporary writers, appearing in this publication, gained the praise of knowledgeable people.

In full coincidence with the predominance achieved by the essay genre after the 1930s, he joined a current that emphasized historical matters, related to both the history of Cuba and that of America. Among his most significant works from that period are: Father Varela in the Spanish Courts of 1822-1823 (1937), Arango and Parreño. Essay on the Interpretation of Cuban Economic Reality (1937), "The Cuban, Ostrich of the Tropics" (1939), "Origins of Cuban Literature" (1939), as well as a series of three monographs dedicated to patriotic symbols; in particular, the flag, the coat of arms, and the national anthem.

In 1939 he joined the editorial commission of Revista Bimestre Cubana, refounded by Fernando Ortiz in 1910, and which underwent adjustments in July-August of 1936. In addition to his functions as editor and commission member, he assumed the secretaryship of the publication.

He participated as a contributor in the History of the Cuban Nation, published in 1953, in 10 volumes, by the team made up of Ramiro Guerra y Sánchez, José Manuel Pérez Cabrera, Juan J. Remos, and Emeterio Santovenia. His contribution was in the sixth volume, with "Autonomism and Other Political Parties."

After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, in 1962 he became connected to the figure of the City Historian, Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, with whom he participated in his cultural promotion work.

This outstanding narrator, journalist, and essayist, in addition to his multiple contributions to Cuban newspapers and magazines, wrote in La Revue de l'Amérique (France), Nosotros (Argentina), Repertorio Americano (Costa Rica), Ariel (Honduras), and Rodó (Chile).

The most revealing aspect of his work was directed toward the strengthening of our nationality, after the full triumph of independence ideals was not achieved in 1902.