Francisco Frías Jacott

Agronomist, researcher, scientific communicator, and agrarian reformer whose family had prominent participation in scientific research.

In 1848 he inherited the title of Count of Pozos Dulces.

Opposed to Spanish colonialism and linked to the annexationist political ideas of Narciso López first, he was later influenced by the reformist ideas of his brother-in-law José Antonio Saco. He was a defender of agrarian democracy.

He was born in Havana, Cuba. His family showed interest in empirical experimentation in the agricultural and livestock spheres, in accordance with the motivations generated by the condition of his coffee plantations. In particular, his brother José J. de Frías preceded him in a notable manner in livestock studies, by publishing the "Essay on Livestock Raising in the Island of Cuba," in 1844.

He opposed Spanish colonialism, linking himself to the political positions led by the husband of his sister Dolores, his first brother-in-law general Narciso López; he received the influence of annexationism to the United States of America, while from the second, José Antonio Saco, he was nourished by the reformism sustained by the ethical principles of Félix Varela's thought. His adhesion to one or another political current was always made in defense of agrarian democracy.

He conducted scientific studies in Paris, on two occasions: the first, from 1842 to 1844, in the agriculture courses of the Conservatory of Arts and Sciences (with Moll and Leclerc Thouin), and the Botanical Garden (with Mirbel), as well as in geology and chemistry at the Sorbona (with Prévost, Dumas, and Pagen); the second, between 1857 and 1860, he attended, also at the Conservatory of Arts and Sciences, the classes in chemistry applied to industry by Pagen, those in agricultural chemistry by Boussingault, and those in zoology applied to agriculture and industry by Boudement.

His professional prestige was made known through an agricultural development program, promoted between 1857 and 1858 through a series of letters of his published in the Havana newspaper el Correo de la Tarde, which were edited in France during 1860, as part of a compilation of his writings.

This program aimed to establish the foundations of an agrotechnological national identity and another agrochemical one, which would contribute to achieving social and economic balance within a society dominated by a minority of large landowners and merchants, which was, moreover, a supporter of covert forms of slave trafficking.

The purpose of achieving agrotechnological identity through an increase in a rural population that was culturally appropriate and had good work disposition was commendable as a fair and democratic alternative, to foresee the creation and distribution of wealth through the promotion of small property and small industry, as well as peasant family labor; however, it was discriminatory toward blacks and Chinese, when it only granted whites (Creoles and immigrants) the right to participate in this identity.

In relation to agrochemical identity, this was sustained by the examples of Álvaro Reynoso and the Count of Pozos Dulces himself, both trained in France, which served to attract young people from wealthy sectors toward studies in agricultural engineering in that European nation, with the purpose of forming a highly qualified human potential that would be at the disposal of agrotechnological needs. In correspondence with this desire, he shared the process of selection and sending of young people to France to study the aforementioned career with landowner José Silverio Jorrín.

He was the first public exponent, around 1868 and within the Royal Academy of Medical, Physical, and Natural Sciences of Havana, of some aspects of Darwinian theory, although in reality he opposed it. He taught agriculture classes at the Chair of the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country of Havana, created in 1865, although his teaching function focused on the work of scientific communication carried out through the press. In 1861 he proposed the creation of the Cuban Agronomic Institute, after having rejected the invitation of colonial authorities to assume the direction of the Special School of Agriculture, belonging to the General Preparatory School of Havana.

He was one of the main defenders of the existence of the Institute of Chemical Research of Havana, since it was founded by José Luis Casaseca in 1848, and after Álvaro Reynoso converted it into an Agronomic Station in 1859. From 1857 to 1860 he was a correspondent in Paris for the Havana newspapers el Correo de la Tarde and el Porvenir del Carmelo, and from 1873 until his death, for various South American and North American newspapers. Of special importance for the political and scientific life of the country was the responsibility he performed as Director and founder of the newspaper El Siglo, from 1863 to 1868.

He was a member of the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country of Havana, as a Full Member (1851) and Merit Member (1865), in which he held the Presidency of its Section of Agriculture and Statistics, between 1867 and 1868.

Likewise, the Royal Academy of Medical, Physical, and Natural Sciences of Havana appointed him Full Member in 1868. At the Floral Games of the Lyceum of Havana, held in 1849 and 1858, two of his scientific works were awarded: the first titled Memoir on the Livestock Industry in the Island of Cuba, and the second referring to the topic "whether the opinion that the destruction of the animal kingdom carries with it that of the plant kingdom and vice versa rests on scientific bases," proposed by the Science Section of the Lyceum.

Given his sympathies for the annexationist movement of the United States of America, he was deported in 1853 to the town of Osuna, in Seville, Spain, where, after an amnesty, he came to occupy in 1854 the Vice Presidency of the Cuban Revolutionary Board of New York. He gave life to the Reformist Party from the newspaper El Siglo, whose direction he held from 1863 to 1868, being elected in 1866 as Commissioner to the Board of Information in Madrid.

He moved to reside in France toward the end of 1869, as a consequence of the outbreak of the Ten Years' War in 1868. His precarious health prevented him from accepting the proposal of the President of the Republic of Peru to direct the School of Agriculture in Lima.

He died in Paris on October 24, 1877. These were his last words: "I die with the sorrow of not seeing realized the dream of my entire life: the Freedom of Cuba"