José María Gálvez Alfonso

===BODY===
Cuban lawyer and politician, forensic orator. Born on September 5, 1834 in Matanzas and died on May 12, 1906 in La Habana, capital of the newly established Republic of Cuba, he was a prominent member of the Cuban revolutionaries who achieved the island's independence from the Spanish Crown in 1898.

A member of a well-to-do Cuban family, he began his studies at the El Salvador school, after which he entered the University of La Habana, where he graduated in Law in 1858.

When on October 10, 1868, the revolutionary leader Carlos Manuel de Céspedes launched the Grito de Yara (the beginning of the emancipation movement), Gálvez immediately sympathized with the rebels, as he saw in their action the only possible way for Cuba to recover its freedom. Gálvez put all his worth and excellent preparation at the disposal of Céspedes and the revolutionaries.

Thus, during the Ten Years' War (1868-1878), Gálvez collaborated with the important Cuban revolutionary nucleus that was exiled in New York, where he took charge of directing the newspaper La Revolución, an organ of propaganda for the independence movement. There, in addition to writing countless articles under a pseudonym, he denounced the abuses of Spanish authorities and called on the Cuban population to support the revolution led by Céspedes. Once the Spanish authorities discovered the authorship of the writings, Gálvez was prosecuted and sentenced to death, a punishment that was commuted to exile on the Isle of Pines.

The Peace of Zanjón, signed on February 10, 1878, between the Spanish Crown, represented by General Arsenio Martínez Campos, and the Cuban revolutionaries Emilio Luaces and Ramón Roa, led to a brief period of peace for the island, while at the same time a broad amnesty was granted for political prisoners from which Gálvez benefited. But, upon obtaining his freedom, Gálvez felt deeply disappointed by the continuous internal disputes within the revolutionary cause, which led to the removal of its two most valuable figures: former president Céspedes and General Quesada, a true war hero in the past conflict.

Gálvez aligned himself ideologically with the cause advocated by the Creole bourgeoisie that denied the country's capacity for absolute independence, and went even further by making public his conviction that a radical separation from Spanish rule would amount to delivering the island to absolute chaos and political anarchy.

Shortly after the peace was signed with Spanish authorities, Gálvez founded the Liberal Party, to which he would later add the adjective Autonomist, a formation of transcendental importance in carrying out a transition program whose ultimate objective was the definitive achievement of independence once the country showed itself prepared and mature for such a reality. From the year of its founding, in 1878, until the achievement of independence in 1898, all Cuban politics revolved around Gálvez's party, as it sustained a bitter struggle for power with the Conservative Integralist Party, much more radical in addressing political transition, as it advocated for outright insurrection against Spanish rule to accelerate the independence process.

When the Spanish Crown granted the island the capacity for self-government, on January 1, 1898, Gálvez served as president of the autonomous Government until its final dissolution on July 17 of the same year, the date on which Spanish military forces surrendered and handed over the island to Cuban insurgents and United States troops.

On January 1, 1899, the United States took charge of the Government of the island, a circumstance that determined in Gálvez the decision to definitively withdraw from political activity, completely exhausted and disillusioned by the evolution and course that recent political events had taken.

Gálvez remained convinced that it would have been much more positive for Cuba, as was soon demonstrated, to follow a natural evolution, that is, a peaceful and sustained transition to achieve Cuba's absolute independence, rather than the armed revolution carried out with the military aid of the United States to accelerate a process that, according to him, sooner or later had to arrive.

Outside the strictly political sphere, Gálvez was vice president of the Economic Society of Friends of the Country (1880-1881) and president of the same (1882-1890). From his extensive production as a journalist we can highlight the numerous articles he published in the Cuban newspapers La Independencia, El Triunfo, El País, La Semana, La América, El Foro Cubano and El Tábano. Author of Cartas de Cuba and other works

Source: MCNBiografías.