Néstor Leonelo Carbonell Figueroa

Captain of the Cuban Liberating Army and outstanding journalist. Combatant in the Ten Years' War, conspirator during the Fertile Truce and close collaborator of José Martí in exile. He was an important historian of the wars for Cuban independence.

He is a figure little known by Cubans.

Because if there were key men in Martí's life, and therefore in Cuba's independence, one was the jovial and ruddy former captain of the mambí army, who from a very young age became involved with the cause of the island's independence, and after a brilliant performance under the orders of the insurgent leaders Serafín Sánchez and Honorato del Castillo, and after suffering the rigors of colonial prisons and a death sentence, he had to take the path of exile.

Born in 1846 in the current province of Santi Spiritus, after losing his first wife in the war and almost all the descendants of that initial marriage, Carbonell departed for Tampa with his second wife and his surviving children from the catastrophe.

In Tampa he settled in the Ibor City neighborhood. There he worked as a teacher, practiced journalism and was the owner of a small bookstore where frequent gatherings of exiled Cubans were held who came day after day in search of the latest news about the fate of the homeland, at once so near and so far away.

In his tireless work in service of Cuba, Carbonell founded the Revolutionary club "Ignacio Agramonte", and in his capacity as President of that institution he invited a young and passionate orator to visit Tampa whose name, José Martí, was already being passed from mouth to mouth among the island's refugees.

This is how the two illustrious Cubans met. Martí moved from New York to the modest podium prepared by the tobacco workers who followed Carbonell, and before them he delivered his two most celebrated speeches, "With Everyone and for the Good of All" and "The New Pines", moving the impassioned audience.

On the basis of the work begun so successfully by the fighter from Spiritus, he founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party, drafting its Statutes in the same humble little room of the dwelling where Carbonell lived with his family, surrounded by the veneration of the children and the aroma of coffee that the moved wife of Néstor Leonelo brewed for him.

After Martí's death, the end of the War brought to Cuban shores a tide of returning exiles full of faith and hope. In December 1898, Carbonell and his small family troop set foot on Cuban soil again. He settled in Havana, where he remained until the end of his life.

During the time of the First North American Intervention he worked as custodian of the Havana Institute, taught classes and wrote articles for the newspaper "La lucha". He later served as assistant chief of the National Archive, and during the first republican Government he earned the hatred of President Estrada Palma by openly opposing his reelectionist plans, which cost him his job. He also firmly condemned the Second Intervention provoked by that political evil.

President José Miguel Gómez elevated him to the rank of Section Chief in the Secretariat of Governance and later entrusted him with the leadership of the Archive of the Presidency of the Republic. During the Government of Alfredo Zayas, Carbonell was a fierce opponent of the corruption unleashed by the dishonest ruler.

Carbonell devoted himself body and soul to divulging the work of Martí, and together with his sons José Manuel and Néstor, he was one of the first panegyrists of the Apostle at the beginning of a century when he was better known among the returned exiles than among Cubans residing on the island.

In the room of his humble Havana home on Amistad Street the Ateneo de La Habana was created, founded by his son José Manuel. Néstor Leonelo, whom his friends nicknamed "the walking press" for his fabulous memory, died in the capital on November 8, 1923, as humbly as he had lived, and only at that final hour did the man of whom Martí wrote receive the unanimous tribute of his contemporaries:

Living in Tampa, like a father to the people, is the most faithful Cuban Néstor Leonelo Carbonell. He is one of those tireless Cubans who only feel joy in what elevates and improves the soul of the homeland….