Manuel Rivero Gándara

Representative political figure of the city of Cienfuegos, Cuba. By the year 1916 he had already risen to the position of Senator of the Republic, from where he would work in favor of every law enacted for the development of his city and that of Villa Clara.

He was born in Cienfuegos on January 3rd, 1874, his ancestors being distinguished members of this society. He spent the first years of his childhood in his native city, where he acquired knowledge of basic literacy and primary education.

Later he began his high school studies at the Provincial Institute of La Habana and after completing them his parents sent him to Madrid with the objective of studying the career of Engineer at the school in that city.

Shortly after his arrival in Madrid he enrolled in said institution, studying there, with great success, the studies of that faculty as an engineer of roads, ports, and canals, being unable to complete the career because he was called urgently to Cuba, due to unexpected family events that forced him to abandon the University when he was close to obtaining his degree.

Eager to exercise in his homeland his uncommon activity, and drawn by matters of politics, he entered resolutely into this by taking part in the struggles sustained by the two great Parties constituted under the Republic. He then affiliated himself with the conservative group, whose principles he was always an enthusiastic and firm defender of, cooperating with his personal efforts and his speeches in many of the successes achieved by this Party.

The numerous and notable services rendered to his Party led to him being nominated as Representative to the Chamber, for the first time in 1908, being elected to that position in November of that year, reelected in the same month of 1910 and reelected again, for the third time, in 1914. For the elections held in the year 1916 he had already risen to the position of Senator.

A lover of progress for his native city of Cienfuegos and a defender of this region for Villa Clara, he cooperated in the Chamber and in the Senate of those years for the approval of all the laws enacted by both legislative bodies in favor of the province of Cienfuegos and that of Santa Clara.

His personal, spontaneous and insistent efforts with the Secretary of Agriculture, Commerce and Labor also resulted in the preparatory work for the edition of the book 11 Biographical Notes being able to be carried out in Cienfuegos, as it was necessary to do, by virtue of the temporary leave granted for that purpose to one of the authors of the Report, an employee of that Department, leave obtained after some objections to its creation had been annulled.