José Antonio Saco López-Cisneros

Cuban lawyer, politician, and sociologist. One of the leaders of colonial reformism, he opposed the annexationist viewpoint and was a scholar of slavery, its history, and its consequences for Cuban society.

He was born in Bayamo. He was the firstborn son of lawyer Joseph Rafael Saco Anaya, from Santiago de Cuba and settled in Bayamo, where he became a town councilman and mayor, and of María Antonia López-Cisneros, owner of some properties and member of a prestigious Creole family. He learned his first letters in his native city. He was placed under the custody of his maternal grandmother upon becoming an orphan, but several lawsuits affected the family patrimony and the young man moved to Santiago de Cuba to live with a paternal aunt, a member of the local oligarchy. In 1814 he entered the Seminary of San Basilio el Magno, where he studied Law and Philosophy. Later he moved to Havana to study philosophy at the Seminary of San Carlos, where he was a student of Félix Varela.

In 1821 he graduated from the Royal and Pontifical University San Gerónimo of Havana (University of Havana) and assumed the position of Professor of Philosophy at the Seminary of San Carlos in place of his teacher, when the latter was elected deputy to the Cortes. There he also held the Chair of Physical Sciences. He published his first works in the Diario Constitucional de La Habana and in the Gazeta de La Havana, in 1820 and 1822, respectively.

In 1824 he traveled to the United States on a study trip. He resided in New York and Philadelphia, and visited Varela frequently, already exiled in that country. He returned hastily to Bayamo in 1827, upon the death of his sister, to settle family matters. He later resided in Camagüey and at the then-famous Angerona coffee plantation, in the vicinity of Havana, devoted to reading in the house's notable library, and to writing. The following year he returned to the United States and settled in New York, where he founded, together with Varela, El Mensajero Semanal (1828-1831), an important journal of political, literary, and scientific topics, which particularly addressed the problems of the American continent and significantly influenced Cuban liberal youth. He won the prize from the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País for his Memoria sobre caminos en la Isla de Cuba, and also in 1831 for his Memoria sobre la vagancia, a sociological study about the influence of slavery on social psychology and work habits on the Island.

Back in Cuba in 1832, he was appointed director of the Revista Bimestre Cubana—organ of the Permanent Commission of Literature of the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País—in which he published several works on economic topics regarding slavery, the slave trade, and the competition of beet sugar. In Análisis de una obra sobre el Brasil, he expressed for the first time his opinion in favor of replacing the slave trade with white immigration. Such ideas earned him the rejection of the planters, who considered him a dangerous enemy, and after a controversy regarding the Academia Cubana de Literatura, whose defense he assumed vigorously, he was deported in 1834, by order of Captain General Miguel Tacón.

He traveled to Great Britain and France, and later to Madrid, where he continued writing about Cuba's problems, hoping to find support among the liberal sectors of Spanish politics. At the same time he continued courses in chemistry at the University of the Sorbonne, in Paris. In 1836 he was elected deputy to the Spanish Cortes by the Oriental Department of the island of Cuba, with the economic support of his brother; but he was unable to take his seat, since that body opposed the colonies being represented in it and being governed by special laws. Saco challenged both decisions in his writings. From 1837 to 1845 he traveled through Portugal, France, Italy, Austria, and Germany, although he resided mostly in Paris. He engaged in an ardent public controversy against the idea of Cuba's annexation to the United States, in which he had as opponents, among others, the writer Cirilo Villaverde and his friend Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, who urged him to support that viewpoint; but Saco feared that Cuban nationality would be absorbed by the North American nation. He published in Paris Papeles sobre Cuba, a compilation of his writings on Cuban topics. In 1861 he spent several months in his homeland, devoted to settling the remains of his wife's inheritance and to seeking economic support to publish a Cuban newspaper in Paris. The following year he began to collaborate in the Madrid newspaper La América, by Eduardo Asquerino, in which he set forth his reformist opinions. He was appointed correspondent of the Liceo de Matanzas and Honorary Academic of the Royal Academy of Medical, Physical, and Natural Sciences of Havana.

In 1865 he was elected as a commissioner from Santiago de Cuba to the Junta de Información, an organ created to establish the bases upon which the laws would rest that, for the benefit of the Island, were to be presented to the Cortes. He moved to Madrid in 1866 and participated actively in the sessions of the Junta; but it turned out to be a failure. He returned to Paris and dedicated himself to finishing his monumental Historia de la esclavitud, a four-volume work, now distanced from Cuban affairs, and opposed to armed struggle when the Ten Years' War broke out. In 1877 he moved to Barcelona, Spain, and in 1879 he was elected deputy to the Cortes by the newly founded Liberal Party. But death, which overtook him in that city on September 26, 1879, prevented him from taking his seat in the Spanish Cortes.

Throughout his life, his works appeared—in addition to the publications mentioned above—in the Diario de La Habana, the Revista de Cuba, and the Revista de la Sociedad Geográfica de Cuba, among others.

José Antonio Saco was a merciless critic of the slavery system, as he considered its use as a fundamental labor force on the plantation an element that hindered the economic development of the Island, although he limited himself to defending gradual and compensated abolition. On the political plane, as a reformist, he aspired for Cuba to remain as a Spanish province, with the enjoyment of all the rights that entailed. His debate with the annexationists contributed to establishing Cuban identity. His work was characterized by the brilliance of the analyses and the careful argumentation of his ideas.

Active Bibliography

Works of José Antonio Saco compiled for the first time and published in two volumes by a fellow countryman of the author, v. I, Libr. Americana y Extranjera, New York, 1853.

Collection of scientific, historical, political papers and others on the island of Cuba, both published and unpublished, 3 v., Impr. de D'Aubusson y Kugelmann, Paris, 1858-1859; v. I, Ministry of Education, Havana, 1960; v. II and III, Ministry of Education, Havana, 1962.

History of Slavery from the Most Remote Times to the Present Day, v. I, Tip. Lahure, Paris, 1875; v. II, Impr. de Kugelmann, Paris, 1875; v. I, Impr. Alfa, Havana, 1936; v. II and III, Impr. Alfa, Havana, 1937.

History of the Slavery of the African Race in the New World and Especially in the Hispanic-American Countries, Impr. de Jaime Jepús, Barcelona, 1877; Cultural, S.A., Havana, 1933; v. I, Ed. Alfa, Havana, 1937; v. II, Ed. Alfa, Havana, 1944.

History of the Slavery of the Indians in the New World, Establecimiento Tipográfico de la Viuda de Soler, Havana, 1883; Cultural S.A., Havana, 1932; Ed. Alfa, Havana, 1945.

Documents for His Life, Annotated by Domingo Figarola-Caneda, Impr. El Siglo XX, Havana, 1921.

Against Annexation, Compilation of his papers with prologue and afterword by Fernando Ortiz, Cultural S.A., Havana, 1928; Ed. de Ciencias Sociales, Havana, 1982.

Reformist Ideology, Publications of the Secretary of Education, Havana, 1935.

Regarding Slavery and Its History, Selection and introduction by Eduardo Torres-Cuevas and Arturo Sorhegui, Ed. de Ciencias Sociales, Havana, 1982.

History of Slavery in the French Colonies, Compilation, introduction, and notes by Orestes Gárciga Gárciga, Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País and Ed. de Ciencias Sociales, Havana, 2002.

Passive Bibliography

CAMACHO, PÁNFILO: José Antonio Saco. Biographical Study, Impr. Molina y Cía., Havana, 1936.

CODINA CARREIORA, PABLO: Essay for a Biography of José Antonio Saco. The Reality of His Thought, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid, 1967.

FERRARA, ORESTES: Political Ideas of José Antonio Saco, Impr. de Cuba y América, Havana, 1909.

GUERRA, RAMIRO: José Antonio Saco and National Education, Impr. El Siglo XX, Havana, 1915.

LORENZO, RAÚL: Nationalist Sense of Saco's Thought, Ed. Trópico, Havana, 1942.

MERINO BRITO, ELOY G.: José Antonio Saco: His Influence on Cuban Culture and Political Ideas, Molina y Compañía, Havana, 1950.

MORENO FRAGINALS, MANUEL: José A. Saco. Study and Bibliography, Universidad Central de Las Villas, Havana, 1960.

ORTIZ, FERNANDO: José Antonio Saco and His Cuban Ideas, Impr. y Libr. El Universo, S.A., Havana, 1929.

PONTE DOMÍNGUEZ, FRANCISCO: The Political Personality of José Antonio Saco, 2nd ed., Impr. Molina y Cía., Havana, 1932.

PORTUONDO ZÚÑIGA, OLGA: José Antonio Saco, Eternally Polemical, Ed. Oriente, Santiago de Cuba, 2005.

SOTO, JOSÉ ANTONIO: José Antonio Saco. The Tireless Polemicist, Ed. Atenea, Santiago de Cuba, 1997.

Source: EnCaribe.org