Raimundo Cabrera Bosch

Essayist, journalist, lawyer and patriot.

He was an intellectual figure of paramount importance in nineteenth-century Cuba. Born in La Habana, he was educated in Güines. Son of a tobacco worker, he remained connected to the town through affection and patriotic activity throughout his life. He studied his primary education in Güines at great sacrifice, standing out from a young age as an erudite writer. At age 8 he won a gold medal from the Güines municipal government as the best student in the town. The modest tobacco worker's son had beaten the Teniente Gobernador's son.

About Güines, Cabrera wrote:—"If I have had loves in life, my love, my great love, has been that plain of endless verdure, flourishing and vigor; that town in whose corners I forged the dreams of childhood and nurtured the illusions of youth, felt the first joys and first sorrows of life. And if I have had success and after the long and arduous path worked by tenacious labor of more than forty years to savor the delights of late triumph, I have concentrated them with my memories and my affection in that beloved place, in whose school I learned to read, in whose church I learned the prayer I have since forgotten, and perhaps denied, where I had true and intimate friends, those of a carefree adolescence unconcerned with self-interest and selfishness; from whose poor classes I emerged, where I found my life's companion, the mother of my children and in whose cemetery rest venerated and unforgettable ashes".

He continued his secondary studies in La Habana, aided by another great güinero, Francisco Calcagno, who provided him, through a scholarship, the opportunity to study at the San Francisco de Asís school in the Havana neighborhood of El Cerro, of which Calcagno was a professor.

He participated in revolutionary activities during the Ten Years' War. At age 17 he attempted to flee the island to join the revolutionary juntas of Cuban emigrants in the United States but was detained by Spanish authorities before leaving Cuba and confined to the Isle of Pines.

Upon leaving prison, he was deported to Spain where he graduated as a lawyer in 1873 from the University of Seville. He returns to Cuba and establishes his own law practice in La Habana, achieving great professional success.

After the Pact of Zanjón in 1878, he changes his political stance and joins the autonomist party. Having witnessed the horrors of war, the leaders of this party, mostly important intellectual figures, advocated for the necessary reforms in the social, economic and political life of the island, without resorting to violence or threatening Spanish sovereignty.

His love and connection to Güines remained throughout his life. He donated the lightning rod that was installed in 1885 on the dome of the reconstructed parish church. It is in this period (1887) that he writes his best-known work Cuba y sus jueces. In 1894 he gifted the first steam pump to the Güines Fire Department.

When the War of Independence broke out in 1895, Cabrera once again found himself on the side of Cuban separatists. He first went into exile in Europe, then in the United States in the city of Nueva York where he publishes Cuba y América, an independent newspaper. He returns to La Habana when the war ends, continuing the publication of Cuba y América along with a vast literary output consisting of short stories, poems and autobiographical narratives.

He was the author in his youth of three important works of comic theater—Del parque a la luna (1887), Vapor correo (1888) and Intrigas de un secretario (1889)—. He is also credited with the three-act drama Gabriel, written in 1871 and published fifty years later. He achieved greater fame, however, for his work outside of theater, Cuba y sus jueces, translated into several languages. He dies in his native city in 1923.

He was active in the Liberal Party but never aspired to elective office. He ended his days as president of the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País, dying in La Habana on May 21, 1923.