Félix Francisco José María de la Concepción Varela Morales

Priest, teacher, writer, philosopher and Cuban politician who had an important role in the intellectual, political and religious life of Cuba during the first half of the 19th Century. Father Varela is considered one of the architects of the Cuban nation and the first Cuban separatist leader.

He was born in his parents' house on Calle del Obispo, between Villegas and Aguacate in Havana. His parents were Don Francisco Varela, a Spanish infantry lieutenant who married Doña Josefa Morales, from Santiago and a housewife. Félix was the third child and his two sisters were named María de Jesús and Cristina. At his Catholic baptism he was named Félix Francisco José María de la Concepción Varela y Morales.

At the early age of three years Varela's mother died and the orphaned child, with his two sisters, was placed in the care of his grandfather Don Bartolomé, who was soon transferred by his work as a military officer to San Agustín de la Florida, where he took Félix, who barely knew how to speak.

Félix began his primary studies with Father O'Reilly, who taught him Latin, grammar and violin. When the time came to begin his secondary studies, Félix returned to Havana. His father had died and his grandfather dreamed of making him a brave and honorable military officer, according to family tradition.

When he was 14 years old his grandfather proposed that he begin a cadet career at a military school, but Varela asked to enter a seminary to become a priest.

He began his studies for the priesthood at the Seminary of San Carlos in Havana. Varela studied, at the same time, at the University of Havana, and his determination and boldness were such that at 19 years of age he began to inherit the teaching positions of his own professors.

At 23 years of age, on December 21, 1811, he received his ordination as a priest in the Cathedral of Havana. At 24 years of age Father Varela was appointed by Bishop Espada as professor of Philosophy, Physics and Ethics at the Seminary. There he prepared the first Physics and Chemistry laboratory in the country: galvanic cells, test tubes, pneumatic machines, mobile planetary system and other instruments for teaching science through experimentation.

Father Varela taught using the most advanced pedagogical methods. Although, according to the testimony of José de la Luz y Caballero, he dominated Latin as if it were his own language, he renewed the teaching methods of the time by using Spanish in his classes and books, in which he abandoned the prevailing Scholasticism for elective Philosophy and introduced experimentation in the study of sciences. He gave great importance to his students learning to reason with their own minds; what mattered was that they learned to think and decide for themselves. For this reason, the outstanding teacher José de la Luz y Caballero, a disciple of Varela, said: "while people think on the Island of Cuba, they will think of the one who first taught us to think."

Varela trained in the classrooms of the San Carlos Seminary the best men of his time. The fruits of his work as a teacher are shown in patriots such as: José A. Saco, Domingo del Monte, a literary figure and patron of writers and artists, and José de la Luz y Caballero.

An heir to the teachings of these men and in turn a student of the Seminary was also Rafael María de Mendive, the teacher of Martí. Varela opened, the first, the path of education for all when he said: "The necessity of instructing a people is like that of feeding them, which admits no delay..." "Who can deny that a people is more enlightened in which everyone knows how to read and write."

During the time that Father Varela was a professor at the Seminary he carried out other activities to promote the culture of our country: he founded the first Philharmonic Society of Havana, joined and worked in the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, wrote plays that were presented on Havana stages and wrote textbooks for Philosophy students.

In 1817 he was admitted as a full member of the Royal Economic Society, which later conferred upon him the title of Member of Merit. In those years his speeches appeared in Diario del Gobierno, El Observador Habanero and Memorias de la Real Sociedad Económica de la Habana.

When in 1820, following the establishment in Spain of the 1812 constitution, a chair of Constitution was added to the Seminary of San Carlos, he obtained it by examination. At 32 years of age, on January 18, 1821, Father Varela inaugurates at the Seminary of San Carlos what turned out to be the first Chair of Law in Latin America. The young people of Havana crowded at the doors and windows where Varela taught his classes. There, for the first time in these lands, legality, civil responsibility and the restraint of absolute power were taught. There the seed of liberation and human dignity that Father de las Casas had planted centuries before was cultivated. Varela himself called these classes "the Chair of Liberty and Human Rights, the source of Civic Virtues and the foundation of the great edifice of our happiness." Although he could only teach for three months, his contribution to the development of constitutional law and his defense of human rights against royal despotism and state tyranny had a great impact on the consciousness of the nascent Cuban nation. In truth, that Chair of Constitution was where Father Varela proclaimed for the first time in Cuba the inalienable and sacred character of human rights. It was there where he clearly and courageously defended the right of peoples to have their freedom and to choose their own governors. It was there, finally, where he planted the political ideas that would later inevitably lead to the struggle for Cuban independence.

Varela could only teach the chair for three months in 1821, because he was elected shortly after as a deputy to the Cortes of 1822, which demonstrates the value that the People placed on his ideas. On December 22 of that same year he presented to the Cortes of Madrid, with other personalities, a proposition requesting an economic and political government for the Overseas Provinces. He also presented a project (reproduced in the Revista Cubana in 1935) requesting recognition of the independence of Hispanic America and wrote a Report that demonstrated the necessity of eliminating slavery of Black people on the Island of Cuba, taking into account the interests of its owners, which he never presented to the Cortes. When Absolutism was reinstated by King Ferdinand VII, he was forced to take refuge in Gibraltar, as he was condemned to death for his advanced ideas.

On December 17 of that year he arrived in the United States, where he was forced to live the rest of his life. First in Philadelphia and later in New York, he published the independence newspaper El Habanero, which entered Cuba surreptitiously. He drafted, together with José Antonio Saco, El Mensajero Semanal. In New York in 1830 he published the newspaper The Protestant Abriger and Annotator, in which he defended the Catholic Faith against attacks by Protestants. He collaborated in El Revisor Político y Literario, Revista Bimestre Cubana and Recreo semanal del bello sexo.

He opened several schools for children and carried out extensive religious work, which quickly gained him prestige. In 1837 he was appointed vicar general of New York. In 1841 the theology faculty of the Seminary of Santa María de Baltimore conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of the Faculty. He also published many works. In collaboration with Justo Vélez he wrote Máximas Morales y Sociales, Instrucciones sociales y morales para la juventud and Instrucciones morales y sociales para el uso de los niños. With the pseudonym "Un paisano suyo" he published the first edition of the Poesías (New York, 1929) by Manuel de Zequeira. He translated from English the Manual de práctica parlamentaria para uso del Senado de los Estados Unidos, (New York, Henrique Newton, 1826), and Elementos de Química Aplicada a la agricultura, (New York, Imp. De Juan Gray, 1826) by Humphrey Davy. His speeches appeared in Revista de La Habana and El Kaleidoscopio.

In the practice of the chair of Philosophy and as part of the "Lessons of Philosophy" he taught Sciences and especially Physics, according to current classification, since at that time a considerable group of sciences that today have their own particular object of study were part of what was understood as Philosophy. The scientific knowledge of the time is treated today as part of the teaching-learning process of Physics in different educational levels.

He was the initiator of experimental Physics teaching in Cuba, being a fervent defender of experimentation in teaching activity and is recognized as the first author of a Physics book in Cuba.

He was a proponent of learning following a deductive path, moving gradually to induction, that is from the general to the particular. For this reason, some contemporary Cuban educators affirm that Varela was based on the idea of the globalization of teaching.

During his stay in the United States his investigative spirit did not wane, hence two of his inventions are known: an apparatus for asthma capable of conditioning the air, freeing it from environmental contamination and maintaining it at uniform temperature.

In 1841 the history of Varela's invention was published in the "Repertorio médico de la Habana," as well as the description of the equipment, and it is also suggested that the apparatus was patented in the United States.

In August 1831 he patented a wheel that facilitated movement, preserved pavement and produced no noise, since its constituent elements, in addition to not being soldered, were internally covered with steel.

His health having declined since 1846, he found it necessary to travel three times, in search of a better climate, to Florida. He died in San Agustín, Florida, United States on February 25, 1853. After the Republic was established, his remains were transferred to Havana, and are placed in the Aula Magna of the University of Havana.