José Joaquín Palma Lasso de la Vega

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Poet, educator, patriot, guardian of justice and youth who strived to create a solid foundation from which the young people of tomorrow could achieve a prosperous future. He was general consul of Cuba in Guatemala and also composed the lyrics of the national anthem of the Central American nation.

He completed his primary education in the schools of the convents of San Francisco and Santo Domingo. At Colegio San José, directed by José María Izaguirre, he studied secondary education. Shortly after completing his secondary studies, he founded, with Francisco Maceo Osorio, the newspaper La Regeneración, in which he published his first poems.

He joined the Revolution of 1868 from its inception and worked in the Bayamo area in the recruitment of men. He served as Aide-de-Camp to Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Father of the Homeland, of whom Palma was his trusted man during the Ten Years' War. He was appointed among the councilmen of the free city council of the town of Bayamo by the Cuban forces that took it. He was among the first to set fire to his own home during the famous burning of the city.

Many influenced the thinking of this patriot, from Carlos Manuel de Céspedes to his teacher José María Izaguirre. A great autodidact, José Joaquín Palma wrote his first articles in the newspaper La Regeneración. He was one of the principal editors of El Cubano Libre, the first newspaper of the Liberation Army, which saw the light in October 1868 and whose direction was in charge of the poet from Bayamo.

In those 82 days of Bayamo without a Spanish flag (October 20, 1868-January 12, 1869), he became co-author of a motion on the abolition of slavery, and in the discussions for its approval, he stated: "If in enslaved Cuba there cannot be free men, in a free Cuba there cannot be enslaved men"…

Due to his participation in the war of 1868, he was forced to emigrate, moving in 1873 to Jamaica, and subsequently to New York and Honduras, to finally settle in Guatemala where he is still considered the (...) most cherished of its adopted sons. He helped Cubans scattered abroad, among them Máximo Gómez Báez. He received various honors, such as the prize for his ode A Honduras at its First National Exhibition and the gold medal presented to him by the president of the nation in 1879, for his virtues as a patriot and as a poet; in 1882 he published in Tegucigalpa the volume Poesías de Juan Joaquín de la Palma. He acquired Honduran citizenship. A year later he returned to Guatemala and obtained the position of secretary to former president Soto.

He was forced to work in the construction of the Panama Canal. Back in Guatemala, he moved to Jamaica, from where he had received news of his wife's illness. During this last period of his stay in Guatemala, he was director of the National Library and professor of Spanish literature at the Faculty of Law. He became a Guatemalan citizen. He returned to Cuba when the Republic was established in 1902. He rejected the appointment to a high position and accepted the representation of Cuba in Guatemala with the position of First Consul. During his stay in Central America, he was a great promoter of culture. He visits Cuba again in 1906 and 1909.

His mortal remains have rested in Bayamo, his native city, since April 1951, fulfilling his own will; expressed in one of his poems written at the beginning of the last century in which he asks, in the face of the approaching end, …"only a willow and a tomb on the sacred bank of the Bayamo River".

His political activity in favor of his country's independence forced him into exile, which conditioned his poetic work, which, moreover, is inscribed in the second romantic generation and stands out for its coloristic and melodic character. Special mention deserves his elegies A Miguel García Gutiérrez, A María Granados, En el mes de noviembre and Las tinieblas del alma. Praised by numerous historical, political and humanistic figures, among whom are recognized the profiles of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Máximo Gómez, Rubén Darío and José Martí, José Joaquín Palma began early in literary pursuits that found expression in the newspaper La Regeneración, which he published with Francisco Maceo Osorio.

His literary life developed between Honduras and Guatemala, although dependent on the strophic forms of traditional Spanish lyric poetry, carries the spirit of the distant country, as permanent nuances of that impulse in which nostalgia and hope are defined, absence and presence, dangers and warnings in whose lyricism the intention of the patriotic is specified. From Palma's literary work, his poetry stands out, which is also the genre most widely disseminated among those cultivated by him.

In his poetics, corresponding to the era of Romanticism in Cuba, one appreciates the fervor of the patriot, the sweetness of a family man, the words of an educated person, the depth of the thinker. He responds anonymously to a competition and with the mastery of his lyre he wins the call for the best lyrics for the Guatemalan National Anthem in 1896. But, an evader of pomp, he kept silent about this merit; 14 years later, gravely ill, he confessed his authorship and was rewarded with a crown of silver laurel.

He is the author of the lyrics of the National Anthem of Guatemala Guatemala Feliz, whose music is by Rafael Álvarez Ovalle.

For a time he resided in Guatemala. The author of the National Anthem lyrics remained in the deepest mystery until July 25, 1911, as Palma, before dying, revealed his secret, that he was the author of the lyrics of that poem converted into an anthem.