Martha de los Ángeles González Abreu Arencibia

Cuban patriot. She devoted her fortune to charitable works and public utilities in Santa Clara, her native city. She contributed numerous financial resources to the struggle for Cuba's independence. In 1874 she married doctor and lawyer Luis Estévez y Romero, who supported her charitable and patriotic activities.

She was born in Santa Clara, on Sancti Spíritus street, in the house marked with the number 49, today Juan Bruno Zayas, daughter of Pedro Nolasco González-Abreu y Jiménez and Rosalía Arencibia y Plana. Both were also born in the city of Santa Clara. She grew up and was educated in the city of Santa Clara in the bosom of a wealthy family.

From a young age she traveled through the United States and Europe, where she became aware of the reality of the times. As a young woman from the best society, she managed to possess refined culture and profound education.

In 1872, along with her family, she moved to Havana. On May 16, 1874, she married Don Luis Estévez y Romero, a young Havana lawyer who shared her patriotic and humanistic ideals. In 1875 her first son was born, who was baptized with the name of her maternal grandfather, Pedro Nolasco Estéves Abreu.

In 1876, following the death of her parents, Marta, by mutual agreement with her sisters, decided to materialize the family's posthumous will to dedicate the fortune to carrying out an extensive charitable work.

Thus began a project where two schools were built for poor children of the white race, one for boys and another for girls; the first was inaugurated on January 31, 1882, with the name of San Pedro Nolasco and the second in September 1883, which was named Santa Rosalía in honor of her mother.

Martha continued the legacy of her parents and thus, parallel to this project, in 1882 she created a school for children of the black race, La Trinidad, all aimed at combining basic instruction with the learning of useful trades to allow students to face their future life.

In the following years she built two asylums for helpless elderly people, the last of which still functions in the city of Santa Clara.

In May 1886 she acquired the land where a building was constructed with three departments: one for the Police, another for the Commerce Fire Department, and one dedicated to education to which the Municipal Conyedo School was moved.

Her masterwork, the theater La Caridad, was inaugurated on September 8, 1885, providing the city with the most important cultural institution of that century in Santa Clara.

That same year she provided housing to twenty families in the city of Santa Clara, in a vacant premises, appointing a caretaker to guard the place and preserve interior order; the place had a kitchen and communal courtyard. With this project, not only was habitat and food provided to a number of people, but they were integrated into society, abandoning their condition of marginalized.

On July 15, 1886, on the occasion of commemorating the 198th Anniversary of the founding of Santa Clara, Marta Abreu had the idea of erecting, in the then Plaza de Armas, today Parque Leoncio Vidal, the first of the monuments that existed there: an obelisk dedicated to the memory of Juan Martín de Conyedo and Francisco Hurtado de Mendoza, constructed in Philadelphia, with Boston granite in gray color, and which honors two men who did much for the education and health of the town.

On one of her trips through Europe, she visited Switzerland, and there she saw some public laundries, which made her immediately think of the women of Santa Clara who washed in the river water and under the sun. She returned to her native city with the project of building four public laundries, an idea that was transmitted to the City Council of Santa Clara.

In 1887, two laundries were built near the Bélico River and an equal number near the Cubanicay. Her charitable work did not stop and in 1894 she built and equipped a Meteorological Station, one of the most advanced of the time, to be operated by the prestigious meteorologist from Villa Clara don Julio Jover y Anido.

In 1895 she sponsored the construction of an Electric Plant and, in parallel, had other social works of great benefit carried out for the Santa Clara residents to improve their living conditions, one of which was the Railroad Station, inaugurated on February 28 of that year.

In 1895 a dispensary for poor children named El Amparo was inaugurated, which provided free medical care and medicines to children.

In 1899 she donated the instruments for the Music Band of the Fire Department, which, in addition to prestiging that organization, gave it the possibility of using it in activities that would allow it to increase income for its maintenance.

She contributed to the repair of the road to Camajuaní and to the reforms made to the church of Buen Viaje and to that of Encrucijada.

She also helped many people and was a patron of artists, intellectuals, and scientists such as Doctors Carlos de la Torre, naturalist; Julio Jover Anido, astronomer; and Manuel Velasco.

Upon assuming possession of her property, among which were large holdings of slaves, Martha and her husband gave them their freedom, giving them parcels of land to work them, and the domestic slaves they converted into salaried workers.

She participated in the 1895 war for which she put all her fortune at the service of the cause and stated that if it ended they would beg for alms, she and her family, but Cuba's freedom was first.

Her independence ideas, well known to colonial authorities, forced her to leave the country with her husband, settling in France from where she developed intense conspiratorial work and fund-raising for the war against Spanish colonialism. From France she maintains a very direct link with the delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, don Tomás Estrada Palma, and with the champion of the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico, Ramón Emeterio Betances.

In 1898 she went to the United States, and in 1899 she moved to Havana. The patriotic prestige of the couple was such that Estrada Palma chose Luis Estévez y Romero as the ideal figure to occupy the vice presidency of the republic, and with that team he entered the first republican elections.

In 1903, faced with the political manipulations of the President and dealings that had nothing to do with his vision of the republic, Luis Estéves, citing health reasons, resigned from office and in 1906, when the Estrada Palma government ended to give way to the second North American intervention in Cuba, Marta and her husband returned again to France.

In the year 1908 her health was greatly impaired, it became necessary to operate on her, the great surgeon and intimate friend of Martha, don Joaquín Albarán (born in Sagua la Grande) assuming this task. But the operation carried out urgently on December 31, 1908 was complicated and on January 2, 1909 she died in Paris, just one month later her husband, on February 2, 1909, committed suicide.

The steamship Flandres left France on February 4, 1920 with the mortal remains of Marta Abreu and Luis Estévez, and on the 20th they were buried in the tomb of the Abreu Arencibia family in the Colón Necropolis. Before this, they received honors from government authorities.

The City Council of Havana decided to change the name of Amargura street in Old Havana to that of Marta Abreu. Since then, tribute has been paid to this benefactress woman and to her patriotic, unwavering and unmistakable legacy, after a century of existence in the lasting memory of Cubans.

The memory of the protector of the poor and of the city of Santa Clara was preserved by her fellow citizens, who on June 24, 1945, celebrating the centenary of Martha Abreu, erected a monument to her in the central park of the city.