José Morales Lemus

Cuban lawyer and politician. He participated in the independence conspiracies of Narciso López (1850-1851) and Ramón Pinto (1854-1855). After presiding over the Board of Information to the Courts (1866), he joined the Cry of Yara (1868) and in 1869 traveled to New York, where he worked unsuccessfully to obtain U.S. recognition of Cuban independentists.

In a hamlet in the eastern province, at the Gibara dock, José Morales Lemus was born. His father, a native of the Canary Islands, was a ship captain, and traveled in the company of his wife. A few months after his birth, he was left motherless and abandoned by his father.

As a helpless child, he became, under the protection of two fellow countrymen of his father, a student, and received a good education and graduated in Havana, first with a bachelor's degree and later as a lawyer. Later, through the generosity of another Canary Islander whose interests he managed, he became the owner of a considerable fortune.

When the mistakes and abuses committed by Spanish rulers Tacón and O'Donell caused the idea of annexation to the United States to germinate in the hearts of some Cubans, an annexationist party was founded, to which Morales Lemus belonged. This Cuban party failed years later, due to the vigorous and reasoned opposition that José Antonio Saco made against it in the realm of ideas.

Later, another group was formed, under the leadership of the Catalan Ramón Pintó, with the same annexationist aims, a group of which Morales Lemus was one of the main leaders.

The conspiracy was denounced to General Concha, the Island's governor at that time, who opened a trial, and finally had Pintó taken to the gallows. Morales Lemus traveled to New York, where he held conferences with those who were to be leaders of the armed movement.

Spain, aware of what was being plotted, appealed to England and France to plead its cause before the Washington Government. These nations did so, thereby giving rise to the American general Quitman, a man of his word, undoing the plans and abandoning all adventurous spirit in order to avoid a serious conflict with the most powerful European nations.

After this failure, Cuba remained immersed in an even more despotic peace. He contributed a substantial sum of money to the founding of the reformist-leaning newspaper El Siglo, which was made famous by the Count of Pozos Dulce and which saw the light in 1863 and which promoted the creation of a political group composed of liberal elements, sons of the country: the so-called reformist party. They obtained nothing from the metropolis for their claims. Then it presented a complete project of political autonomy for the island, inspired by the greatest possible sum of freedoms. But Spain did not take it into consideration.

He returned to Cuba, where he began again to devote himself to his law practice. When the war began in Yara, on October 10, 1868, Spain sent General Dulce as Governor. Under his command occurred the events called those of the Teatro Villanueva and the Palacio de Aldama. Morales Lemus, from the first days of the Spanish governor's arrival, embarked for New York. There, from his arrival, he set about exploring the sentiment of the American government, hopeful that it could favor the Cubans in their struggle for independence.

Old and infirm, he nevertheless accepted the position of representative of the revolution in the United States. Shortly after General Grant took office as President of the United States, Morales Lemus obtained an audience with him in which he exposed the situation of Cuba and the aspirations of the Cubans in arms, obtaining only uncertain promises.

After this visit to Washington, he returned to New York, where he was awaited by the news that the first Cuban Government had been established in Guáimaro. He also received credentials as Extraordinary Envoy and Minister to the United States, with powers to negotiate the recognition of independence.

He died on June 28, 1870, in New York.

Source: Eumed.net