Néstor Ponce de León La Guardia

He was born at the Merced sugar mill, property of his parents, in the region of Cárdenas, Matanzas.

He completed his primary education in La Habana, and his secondary education at the Colegio de Humanidades, where he was a student of Anselmo Suárez y Romero.

In 1858 he graduated with a degree in Jurisprudence. He was one of the founders of Brisas de Cuba and collaborated in El Correo de la Tarde, El Siglo, La Opinión and El Ateneo. For his article "La trata amarilla" he was threatened by the captain general with deportation from the country.

Under the pseudonym of "Un emigrante cubano" he published two volumes titled Información de reformas de Cuba y Puerto Rico (1867), where he proved that what the Spanish had published on this subject was inaccurate and biased. He directed El País in November of 1868, and in 1869 he published three issues of La Verdad, taking advantage of the freedom of the press granted by Domingo Dulce. There he defended the Revolución de Yara.

Around this time he was among the founders of the Revista Crítica de Ciencias, Literatura y Artes. Persecuted by the colonial police, who had found weapons in his house, he managed to board a ship to the United States in February of 1869.

All his property, including an important library, was seized. He lived in exile for thirty years, practicing law in Nueva York, where he was founder, secretary and treasurer of the Junta Central Revolucionaria of Cuban emigrants in that city. For a brief time he directed the newspaper La Revolución, the organ of the Junta.

His Nueva York bookstore became a meeting place and information center for the Cuban colony, and it was there that Martí obtained the necessary information to write his article "El 10 de abril" (Patria, 1892), to commemorate the celebration of the Asamblea de Guáimaro.

For his revolutionary activities he was sentenced to death in La Habana.

In 1871 he published The Book of Blood, a book that contained an account of crimes committed in Cuba by the Spanish, and which was completed by José Ignacio Rodríguez. He was editor of El Educador Popular and wrote articles and pamphlets on the Cuban problem. He composed the Technological Dictionary English-Spanish and Spanish-English (1883-1893), a work that José Martí described as "of great scope and usefulness."

When Spanish rule ended he returned to the Island, where he devoted himself to various cultural endeavors. The North American intervention government appointed him director and conservator of the Archivos Nacionales.

He made translations from English and German, among them that of El intermezzo lírico by Enrique Heine. In Martí's work there are numerous references to Ponce de León, and among them stand out the articles "Libros de Hispanoamericanos y ligeras consideraciones" (La América, Nueva York, June 1884), "El prólogo de Ponce de León a su Historia de la isla de Cuba" (El Economista Americano, Nueva York, June 1888), about a work that remained unfinished, and "Galería de Colón" (Patria, Nueva York, April 16, 1893).

He founded the newspaper Brisas de Cuba, the Revista crítica de ciencias, literatura y artes and Joyas del Parnaso Cubano, together with Valdés Aguirre. He was editor of La Verdad, El Educador Popular and contributor to El Ateneo. He is the author of a Historia de la isla de Cuba. He died on December 17, 1899, in La Habana.