Rafael Montoro Valdés

Lawyer, historian, and literary critic. He was founder of the Liberal Party (Autonomist), in which he served as a prominent orator and principal ideologist, with a position opposed to independence.

He was born in La Habana. His father possessed considerable assets in his native region of Camagüey.

Between 1862 and 1863 he studied at Colegio El Salvador, directed at that time by José María Zayas.

The following year he traveled abroad for health reasons, a trip in which he visited France, England, and the United States; in the latter country he completed elementary studies in the city of Nueva York, during the year 1866.

Back in Cuba he enrolled at Colegio San Francisco de Asís, where he was a student of Enrique Piñeyro and Juan Clemente Zenea, and in which he received his first lessons in oratory from Antonio Zambrana.

In 1868 he visited France, and for ten years he resided in Spain, where he began studies corresponding to a degree in Law.

In Madrid he participated in the work of the Ateneo, presided at that time by Don Juan Valera, and in which he lectured on such varied topics as: realism in dramatic art; positivism and its influence on philosophical and natural sciences; the English Constitution; Spanish poetry and theater, among others. Similarly, he published various articles in the pages of Revista Contemporánea, El Tiempo, Revista Europea, and El Norte, in which he made contributions related to philosophical thought, literary criticism, and bibliographic matters, as well as providing valuable commentary on economics, politics, the arts, and sociology.

In said institution he shared his activities with figures of the caliber of Canovas, Azcárate, and Castelar. There he taught a course on "The French Revolution," and addressed the characteristics of Krausism and its influence on other thinkers. During this period, he studied the thought of Hegel, as part of his cultural formation, met José Martí during one of his visits to the Library, and served as Secretary of the Association of Spanish Writers and Artists.

Upon his return to Cuba in 1878, he was founder of the Liberal Party (Autonomist), in which he served as a prominent orator, and became for nearly twenty years its principal ideologist, dedicating himself entirely to its organization and defense, in which he demonstrated both his political capacity and his rectitude of principles, despite his position opposed to independence.

In 1884 he obtained the degree of Licentiate in Civil and Canon Law from the University of La Habana, and two years later was elected as Deputy to the Spanish Cortes.

During 1898 he served as Secretary of the Treasury of the brief autonomist government; upon the establishment of the Republic, he held the position of Plenipotentiary Minister of Cuba in England and Germany, during the presidential mandate of Tomás Estrada Palma.

In 1908 he appeared as a candidate for Vice President of the Republic for the Conservative Party; three years later he served as Secretary of the Presidency during the government of Mario García Menocal, and subsequently served as Secretary of State during the presidential period of Alfredo de Zayas y Alfonso. From its founding in 1910, he served as Member of the National Academy of Arts and Letters, whose Annals he directed in 1916, and in 1926 he entered with equal rank in the Academy of the History of Cuba.

He died in La Habana on August 14, 1933.

He engaged in sociological, economic, and political studies, as well as in literary criticism. He published more than 350 articles and works in the most diverse periodical publications of Cuba in the late nineteenth century and first third of the twentieth century.