Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros

Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, El Lugareño, always demonstrated a profound dialectical concern for the country's economic management and a firm vocation to serve the interests of the homeland. In the Gaceta de Puerto Príncipe he publishes, between 1838 and 1840, his customs articles "Escenas cotidianas". He died in La Habana on December 7, 1866, but his remains rest in his beloved Puerto Príncipe, today Camagüey.

Gaspar Betancourt y Cisneros (El Lugareño), was born in Puerto Príncipe. He wrote most of his articles on agriculture, economics, industry, education, travel, customs, colonization, literature, criticism, and science.

He promoted education by founding schools for the poor and giving classes to farmers. He founded an agricultural colony, distributed land from his estate free of charge, and created, established and inaugurated, against all odds, the railroad from Camagüey to Nuevitas, the second on the Island.

Gaspar Betancourt y Cisneros promoted livestock exhibitions in Camagüey. He promoted public tributes to the memory of great Cubans. He had to emigrate and returned after fifteen years of exile.

In his life there was no rest, but what is admirable about this singular man is not in how much and how varied he did, but in the how and the why.

He is the first journalist of his time, not a journalist "of Editorial," but of vocation. His articles without literary ornaments nor almanac erudition are not only the clear and limpid expression of his thought, but the first act of his will, the prelude to his accomplishments.

Gaspar Betancourt y Cisneros died in La Habana on December 7, 1866.