Enrique José Varona

Cuban intellectual, pedagogue, and politician, Vice President of the Republic of Cuba. He became a mentor to young generations in their struggle against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado.

He was born in the city of Puerto Príncipe (today Camagüey). His parents, educated and in comfortable economic circumstances, directed him toward the study of languages, until he came to master several. He nourished himself with the knowledge of classical antiquity, the works of masters of Spanish literature and contemporary authors, which formed the basis of his vast knowledge. Although he studied at the Escuelas Pías de Camagüey, his education was mostly self-taught.

On November 4, 1869—at the beginning of the Ten Years' War—he was among those who rose up at Las Clavellinas, near the city of Puerto Príncipe, but had to abandon the struggle due to illness. He was detained and jailed for several days, then released.

In 1870 he published a short theatrical work, La hija pródiga, a dramatic allegory in which he reproached Cuba for its uprising against Spain. Years later he would be ashamed of this attempt, upon witnessing the cruelty of Spanish authorities toward the body of Major Ignacio Agramonte y Loynaz.

On July 4, 1876, his speech Ojeada sobre el movimiento intelectual en América defended the values of Cuban intellectuality that had preceded him; in particular, that of Félix Varela, José de la Luz y Caballero, and José Antonio Saco.

During the war he served as counselor of the Section of Literature and Sciences of the Sociedad Popular Santa Cecilia, a cultural institution in his native city. He published poetry and kept abreast of the latest advances in science, particularly biology. His first work on this subject, "Heterogénesis," appeared in the Revista de Cuba on March 5, 1877.

A partisan of freedom of science and teaching, he embraced positivist philosophy, placing all his faith in the progress of humanity and scientific development. The results of the studies he conducted during the 1870s were embodied, in the following decade, in his so-called Philosophical Conferences, on logic, psychology, and moral philosophy.

He also collaborated—at the beginning of the 1880s—with Vidal Morales Morales and Julián Gassié in the gatherings held at the residence of José Antonio Cortina, director of the Revista de Cuba, as well as in cultural soirées that brought together Cuba's intelligentsia of the time.

From May 1878 until 1884, he was a member of the Sociedad Antropológica de la Isla de Cuba, particularly interested in the classification of races or human species, as well as their interbreeding. He also participated in scientific and cultural activities at the Liceo de Guanabacoa, the Ateneo de La Habana, and the Caridad del Cerro.

At the end of the first independence war, he condemned the signing of the Pacto del Zanjón through a poem titled "La Paz," written in February 1878.

On August 8 of that year the Liberal Party was founded, which later became the Liberal Autonomist Party. Varona, who had moved to La Habana, joined it. He was a member of its Executive Board and also served as editor of its newspaper, El Triunfo. Unlike other autonomists, he advocated for the immediate abolition of slavery without compensation. But despite the differences, he represented his party on two occasions as a deputy in the Spanish Cortes. Contradictions with the autonomist leadership led him, in December 1885, to decide to break definitively with autonomism.

From that year until 1895, he directed the Revista Cubana, a continuation of the Revista de Cuba. In it he published laudatory critiques of books on the first independence war, such as Desde Yara hasta el Zanjón, published by Enrique Collazo in 1893.

In 1894 he traveled to New York and met with the treasurer of the Partido Revolucionario Cubano, Benjamín Guerra, as the Delegate José Martí had traveled to Mexico.

After Martí's death on May 19, 1895, just a few months after the Independence War began, Enrique José Varona returned to New York to publish the editorials of the newspaper Patria until November 1898.

Alongside his journalistic work, he gave lectures and delivered speeches in favor of independence, such as his manifesto "Cuba contra España" addressed to the Hispanic American peoples in 1895, in which he substantiated the necessity of insurrection on the Island.

After the war concluded and the first official military occupation of the United States in Cuba began on January 1, 1899, Varona returned to Cuba. Between February and October of that year he took charge of a new newspaper, Patria, and was editor of La Discusión.

In January 1900, as a member of the cabinet of American general Leonard Wood, he held the position of Secretary of the Treasury, and later that of Secretary of Public Instruction. From the latter he carried out the reform of secondary education through the so-called Varona Plan.

In mid-1900 he rejected his election as a delegate to the Constitutional Assembly of 1901 from Camagüey; the following year he also refused to aspire to the position of senator from the same province for the Republican Party.

As part of his teaching work at the University of La Habana, in 1905 he delivered the lecture El imperialismo a la luz de la Sociología, in which he called for maintaining the political and ethnic unity of the Cuban people in the face of imperial tendencies.

In several articles that appeared in El Fígaro between September 2, 1906, and January 20, 1907, he condemned the political causes that provoked the Guerrita de Agosto and denounced the transfer of the country's wealth to foreign monopolies.

On May 20, 1913, he suspended his work as professor in the Chair of Logic, Psychology, Ethics, and Sociology at the University of La Habana to take office as Vice President of the Republic until 1917, when he left government following the reelection of President Mario García Menocal.

That year Congress granted him a lifetime pension; the following year, the university faculty awarded him the title of Honorary Professor.

In 1918 he undertook a review of his political work, which he selected to be published in two volumes: Por Cuba and De la Colonia a la República.

In 1921 he delivered a speech at the Academia Nacional de Arte y Literatura—which he had joined in 1915—that was published in Costa Rica with the title "El imperialismo yanqui en Cuba." In it he confirmed his ideas regarding the United States' intention to establish its political domination in Latin America.

During the government of Alfredo Zayas he denounced the interventionist policy of the United States government through its special envoy, Enoch Crowder, and exhorted public opinion to speak out against it.

On January 12, 1923, he intervened in the assembly presided over by student leader Julio Antonio Mella in the Aula Magna of the University of La Habana, in favor of university reform.

Beginning in 1925 he began to denounce the government work of President Gerardo Machado Morales, in the economic, social, and political spheres. By the end of that same year his signature headed a public letter from the Grupo Minorista, regarding the hunger strike carried out by Mella.

In early 1927 he participated in the national protest movement against the extension of powers and Machado's repression, and headed with his signature a Manifesto to the Nation of the newly organized Asociación Unión Nacionalista, made up of traditional politicians led by Carlos Mendieta.

On March 30 of that year he opened the doors of his residence to university students who carried a protest manifesto against the approval of the project to modify the Constitution and extend powers that would allow Machado's reelection for a period of six years. That day the public force raided his home, but did not prevent him from directing an address to the students present, who, hours later, approved the manifesto Al pueblo de Cuba y a los Estudiantes, in which they set forth the facts that had occurred and their decision to fight against the extension of powers.

In October 1927 he organized and presided over the Junta Nacional Cubana Pro Independencia de Puerto Rico.

In the early years of the 1930s he continued his work of reflection and political guidance until the Machado dictatorship fell on August 12, 1933.

That year he was visited by the United States ambassador, Benjamin Sumner Welles, and also by leaders of the Directorio Estudiantil Universitario. He called on the latter to maintain their opposition to Welles' mediation policy, aimed at favoring a political transition in Cuba in favor of American interests.

On August 16, 1933, he wrote his last guiding article, "Mis consejos." He died on November 19, 1933, and his body was laid out in the Aula Magna of the University of La Habana.

Source: EnCaribe.org