José Ramón Betancourt Betancourt

Cuban writer who stood out for his work in prose.

He was born in Puerto Príncipe, Camagüey. He spent his childhood in Camagüey. There he completed his primary education at the Escolapian Fathers school and was a student of philosophy and Latin. He moved to La Habana and studied law at the Seminary of San Carlos. In 1847 he obtained the degree of Bachelor of Civil and Canon Law and the title of lawyer, granted by the Audiencia of Puerto Príncipe. In that city he was appointed syndic and procurator general of the City Council. He was linked to the first revolutionary movements and published his articles in the Gaceta de Puerto Príncipe.

In 1851 he was exiled to Spain due to his involvement with annexionist groups operating in Camagüey. He returned to La Habana in 1856.

He was director of the Liceo Artístico y Literario de La Habana when Avellaneda was crowned in 1861.

He moved to Europe in 1868 because of the wave of repression unleashed against Céspedes' uprising. He traveled through Italy, France, and Spain. In the latter country he was appointed deputy to the Cortes for Puerto Rico. Through this position he denounced the slave trade and exposed the grave political and social situation of Cuba and Puerto Rico.

In 1879 he was appointed deputy to the Cortes for Camagüey. Thanks to his efforts, the Banco Agrícola and the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza of his native city were created. He was elected Senator of the Kingdom by the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País of Cuba and Puerto Rico.

He distinguished himself as an orator. He collaborated in magazines and newspapers, published verses, but his greatest work is in prose. He died in La Habana in 1890.

The literary newspaper El Fanal de Camagüey published his novel Una feria de la Caridad in 183... in the year 1841. A second edition was made in La Habana in 1858 and, later, a third in Barcelona. It was written with the purpose of censuring gambling.

There appear different historical figures in the legendary Camagüey between 1835 and 1840: Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, El lugareño, the sacred orator Montes de Oca, the patriot Joaquín de Agüero, among others. The nucleus of the work revolves around the Caridad festivities in a small town near Puerto Príncipe.

He collaborated in La Gaceta and El Fanal (Camagüey) and in the Revista de Cuba and the Revista Geográfica Comercial (Madrid).

Among his works are found, in addition to Una feria de la caridad en 183...: Cuento camagüeyano, Cartera de viaje, Las dos banderas. Apuntes históricos sobre la insurrección en Cuba. Cartas al Exmo. Sr. Ministro de Ultramar. Soluciones para Cuba, Prosa de mis versos, Discursos y manifiestos políticos, 1887.

José Ramón de Betancourt y Betancourt was a remarkable product of the cultural development of the Puerto Príncipe patriarchy: in him were concentrated its principal merits: the struggle for enlightenment, the will to unite economic interest and social commitment, the desire to place Cuba in an important place among nations, and he also coincides with the ideological contradictions that this social stratum showed, especially from 1868 until the interwar period, which in him manifested itself in choosing the path of autonomist reformism rather than the path of independence to preserve Cuba's economic prosperity, although he showed sympathies for many figures associated with the struggle for freedom.

His successful endeavor to honor his fellow countryman and friend Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda with a symbolic coronation ceremony at the Teatro Tacón was particularly notable. He was also one of the few who attended the funeral of the writer, when, almost forgotten, she died in Madrid on February 1, 1873.

He and his wife Ángela López frequently welcomed Martí in their Madrid home during the period of his first deportation to Spain. Years later the author of Ismaelillo would recall that home in a review published in Patria:

He always treated his friends' children as his own in his home. In his Madrid house, a pleasant refuge for those who never ceased working for the independence of the country, who never set foot in vile places, nor Cubans of those who at the hour of our martyrdom were going around magazines and cafés celebrating the "glories of our Spanish infantry," nor more Spanish than those who defended freedom. […]

The great poverty of Francisco Díaz Quintero was spoken of with tenderness, who so as not to let El Jurado Federal die, where he defended the right of Cuba and freedom and clemency, would pawn the spoons, the sheets, the small treasure of his noble Pepa and their only son. Much was said of Gaspar Cisneros, whose works, carefully gathered in separate notebooks, were reverently leafed through by neophytes. By his nickname of "Cuba Libre" the son of the Marquis was called—who so as not to burden the friend of his father, made of paper the bones with which he studied medicine, always dressed in black. The house of José Ramón Betancourt in Madrid was wise and hospitable.[…]

Although he cultivated poetry, theater, travel articles, his most famous work is the novel Una feria de la Caridad en 18... which, despite having numerous defects in its construction, is capable of portraying the Puerto Príncipe of the first half of the nineteenth century masterfully and offering a very complete picture of the customs of its inhabitants.

José Ramón de Betancourt died in La Habana on June 23, 1890 in his residence at Galiano 84. Today he is remembered as one of the most notable Puerto Príncipe intellectuals of the colonial period.