Rafael García Bárcenas

Cuban poet, philosopher, and revolutionary.

He was born in Güines, Province of La Habana. There he began his studies at the Presbyterian school Kate Plumer Bryan Memorial, better known as Colegio Americano, until at age 16 he moved to the capital and continued them at Academia Newton. In 1925 he graduated as Bachelor of Sciences and Letters from Instituto de La Habana.

He began studies in medicine at Universidad de La Habana but abandoned them for Philosophy and Letters, which he completed in 1938 with his doctorate. From a very young age he devoted himself assiduously to poetry and was awarded prizes on several occasions.

In 1926 his A la palma criolla won the prize for best décima in a contest held in Santiago de Cuba in homage to poet José María Heredia and his Amor in the Juegos Florales won the prize for best lyric composition in another contest in Holguín.

In 1927 his notebook Proa was published, with a prologue by Agustín Acosta, and his poem Rapsodia patria won the Flor Natural of the National Juegos Florales on the occasion of the Republic's Fiftieth Anniversary. In 1935 his work Sed shared the National Poetry Prize, in a contest convened by the Department of Culture of the Ministry of Education, which was headed by hispanist José María Chacón y Calvo, with a jury made up of Regino E. Boti, Andrés Núñez Olano, and Dulce María Loynaz. In 1943 his work Responso Heroico obtained the Prize of the Literary Contest of the Commission for the Monument to University Martyrs. In 1930 he was appointed literary director of the magazine Mundo Social.

He actively opposed Gerardo Machado and his extension of powers, participating from 1927 in the first Directorio Estudiantil Universitario, and again in 1930, when he directed its press organ Cuba Libre and wrote proclamations and declarations. In one of them titled "A las armas" he called on officers and soldiers to rebel against Machado's injustices. He rose up as a guerrilla fighter against the dictatorship in 1931, until within a few months he was captured by the army and imprisoned in Castillo del Príncipe. As a result of this experience he published in El Mundo the report "105 días huyendo," denouncing political repression under Machado.

On September 4, 1933 he signed, along with others, including Sergeant Batista, at the Military Campamento de Columbia, the proclamation that established the Pentarquía, later transformed into the revolutionary government of Grau and Guiteras. He took an active part in the revolutionary definition of this government and opposed the interventionist management of Sumner Welles.

In 1934 he founded and directed a short-lived weekly (13 issues), Kayuko, with unsigned articles on political topics in satirical or humorous tone.

He participated in the founding of the Partido Revolucionario Cubano (PRC) in 1936 and collaborated with the organizations Izquierda Revolucionaria and Frente Cubano in the late 1930s. In 1946 he was a participant in the controversy that divided the PRC into "auténticos" and "ortodoxos," adhering to the latter led by Eduardo Chibás.

In 1946 he founded Revista Cubana de Filosofía, which he directed from its inception through issue 10, January-June 1952. He was one of the founders of Sociedad Cubana de Filosofía. In 1950 he was awarded the National Prize in Philosophy for his work "La estructura del mundo biofísico." He also worked as a professor, teaching Logic and Introduction to Philosophy at Instituto de La Habana and as a professor of Moral Philosophy, as an adjunct to the Chair of Philosophy at Universidad de La Habana. He was also a professor of Military Psychology at the Escuela Superior de Guerra of the Army, to which he had been appointed with the recommendation of its founder, Colonel Ramón Barquín.

When Fulgencio Batista staged a coup on March 10, 1952, he resigned from his position at the Escuela Superior de Guerra and went to Universidad de La Habana to oppose the coup. On May 20, less than three months after the coup, he founded at the University the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, in practice a split from the PRC(Ortodoxo) that would seek to overthrow Batista by violent means. He directed his conspiratorial activities toward the student youth and military circles and edited under the name Vanguardia the press organ of this movement.

On April 5, 1953, Easter Sunday, probably as a result of an informant, he was arrested along with other young members of his organization, accused of organizing and directing an attempted assault on the military campamento de Columbia (then the largest in the country), entering through gate 13 (Batista had entered the previous year through gate 6). He was tortured and sentenced to two years in prison on Isla de Pinos. He was pardoned and released on June 5 the following year. In October he went into exile due to the possibility of being imprisoned again, but returned shortly after and continued his activities with his group.

It is notable that the attempted assault on the military barracks of Santiago de Cuba and Bayamo by Fidel Castro and his followers took place less than five months later, on July 26. Many of Rafael García Bárcena's disciples later joined the ranks of that movement, most notably his defense lawyer in the trial for the events of April 5, Armando Hart Dávalos.

After 1959 he was appointed Ambassador of Cuba to Brazil. In 1961 he fell seriously ill and moved to La Habana, where he died of a stroke on June 13, 1961.

Poet, philosopher, political leader, Rafael García Bárcena was a prominent protagonist in the revolutionary processes of the twentieth century in Cuba: 1927-33 and 1952-59, and had important intellectual influence on both generations. His political ideology could be summarized in his statements from 1955 (Bohemia, November 13, 1955, p. 24): "Nationalism, democracy, and social justice must advance together in our Hispanic American countries. To sacrifice one of these objectives in the name of the others, or to sacrifice two of them in favor of one of the three, entails a culpable postponement of objectives that must be pursued simultaneously, just as sacrificing all three together... constitutes a crime of lese majesty."

His son, psychiatrist Dr. Rafael García Bárcena, Jr., resident in Puerto Rico, maintains an internet portal dedicated to honoring the memory of his father: https://redescubrimiento.org/index.php

Bibliography of Rafael García Bárcena:

Proa: poemas. Prologue by Agustín Acosta. Pérez, Sierra y Cía. La Habana 1927. 141 pages.
Sed, poesia, 1929-1936. Empresa Editora de Publicaciones, La Habana 1937. 96 pages.
Responso heroico; poema. La Habana, La Verónica, La Habana 1943. 23 pages. "Poem that won the Prize of the Literary Contest of the Commission for the Monument to University Martyrs, September 30, 1930 to October 3, 1934."
Individualización de la Ética. La Habana 1938.
Esquema de un correlato antropológico en la jerarquía de los valores.
La Habana 1943. 17 pages.
Estampa espiritual de Federico Nietzsche, 1844-1944. (Exégesis of the centennial). Ediciones de la Revista Índice. La Habana 1944. 19 pages.
Re-edited with new title: El alma cristiana de Federico Nietzsche, La Habana 1950.
Prologue to Observaciones sobre la constitución política de la monarquía española seguidas de otros trabajos políticos, by Rev. Dr. Félix Varela. Universidad de La Habana, La Habana 1944. xv, 198 pages.
Prologue to Aforismos y apuntaciones, by José de la Luz y Caballero, arranged and annotated by Roberto Agramonte. Portrait of José de la Luz by José Martí. Universidad de La Habana. La Habana 1945.
Discourse delivered in the Aula Magna of Universidad de La Habana, at the evening event of August 15, 1946, to commemorate the death of professor Ramiro Valdés Daussá. La Habana, Imp. de la Universidad de la Habana, 1946.
Coyuntura histórica para una filosofía latinoamericana, in Revista Cubana de Filosofía, vol. 1, no. 1, June-July 1946, p. 32-35.
Estructura de la estructura (esquema para la filosofía de la Estructura). Note by Francisco Romero. Imprenta de la Universidad de la Habana, La Habana 1948, 22 pages. Also in Revista Cubana de Filosofía, vol. 1, no. 2, April-June 1947, pages 25-34.
La estructura del mundo biofísico. National Prize in Philosophy, Fondo Nacional de Cultura, 1951. The original manuscript apparently has been lost, although it is likely it was pre-published in two parts in Revista Cubana de Filosofía under the titles ¿A dónde va el universo físico? (vol. 1, no. 3, January-December 1948, pages 27-40) and ¿A dónde va el mundo orgánico? (vol. 1, no. 4, January-June 1949, pages 52-75).
Redescubrimiento de Dios; una filosofía de la religión. Editorial Lex, La Habana 1956, 178 pages. Facsimile edition of Editorial Cubana, Miami 2002, xviii+178 pages. Introduction by José Ignacio Rasco.

Source: Filosofía.org