Tomás Estrada Palma

A teacher by profession, president of the Republic of Cuba in Arms during the Ten Years' War and substitute for José Martí in the delegation of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. First president of the Republic of Cuba (1902-1906).

He was born in Bayamo on July 9, 1835. He studied his first letters at home; later he traveled to Havana and enrolled in the private school of Toribio Hernández, and received his bachelor's degree from the institute in that city. He began studying Law at the University of Havana. Later he moved to Seville. He was unable to complete his Law studies because the death of his father forced him to return to his native city. At thirty years old he began working as a teacher in the Cuartón de Guamo, in the Guantánamo region; when the Ten Years' War broke out he was still practicing that profession.

On October 11, 1868, he was appointed by Spanish authorities to be part of a commission tasked with persuading Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y del Castillo to lay down arms. Nevertheless, the young Estrada Palma decided to join the liberation movement and, when the city of Bayamo was occupied by insurgents, he was appointed town councilman. In April 1869, following the celebration of the Guáimaro Assembly, he was elected representative to the Chamber (for the El Cobre district, in the eastern region) by the political group led by Rafael Morales y González, Moralitos.

Between 1871 and 1872 he participated in the invasion and campaign of Guantánamo, directed by Máximo Gómez, and the following year he was among those who most strongly advocated for Céspedes' removal from the presidency.

When the fall in combat of Major Ignacio Agramonte occurred and Máximo Gómez took over leadership of Camagüey, Estrada Palma rejoined the forces of the Dominican strategist, until 1875, when Gómez decided to take the territory of Las Villas to begin the invasion of the West.

In February 1875 he joined the troops of General Vicente García and supported the removal of President Salvador Cisneros Betancourt. When Juan Bautista Spotorno took over the presidency, Estrada Palma was called to occupy the position of Secretary of Foreign Relations. During this period he publicized in Latin America and the United States, through the diplomatic agents of the Republic in Arms, the decree imposing the death penalty for individuals who, coming from enemy territory, presented peace proposals verbally or in writing based on not recognizing independence.

On March 29, 1876, he was elected by majority as president of the Republic in Arms. He held the position when Gómez was removed from Las Villas; he then appointed him Secretary of War and simultaneously designated General Vicente García as chief of the forces that the Dominican leader had in Villarean territory.

In October 1877 he was detained by Spanish forces, transferred to Cádiz, and provisionally imprisoned in the Castillo de Santa Catalina, from which he was moved to the Castillo de Figueras. In the new prison, Estrada Palma expanded his studies of Philosophy, Public Law, and languages, and maintained correspondence with friends inside and outside Cuba. In some of his letters from that time he noted that, in his view, Cubans were not in a position to govern themselves, so he considered annexation to the United States as the most reasonable solution.

He continued his work as a teacher, which he had begun before the start of the 1868 war. In the early 1880s he traveled to France and later to New York, where he worked as a teacher in the town of Central Valley. In New York he founded in 1884, with David Cornell, the Tomás Estrada Palma Institute, for the education of Latin American children. At this school students from Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, and Cuba received instruction. Don Tomás, as he was known, taught subjects in the humanities: Latin, Greek, English, French, Spanish, History, Literature, and dissertations on Spanish classics.

From 1887 onwards he became involved in the organizational work undertaken by José Martí within the Cuban emigration in the United States, whose culminating point was the creation, on April 10, 1892, of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, of which he would become a delegate. Estrada Palma attended as a speaker at commemorative events of October 10 and other patriotic activities, such as the one held on May 5, 1893, at Hardman Hall, where the uprising in Holguín carried out by the Sartorius brothers was discussed. When Martí died on May 19, 1895, Estrada Palma was elected, by the vast majority of clubs, as delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. To this position was added the appointment as plenipotentiary delegate conferred upon him by the Government Council of the Republic in Arms.

Between 1895 and 1898 he served in both positions. The powers granted to him were very extensive, "as representative of the Republic in Arms by himself or through delegates, before the peoples, governments, and nations with which he considered it convenient to establish relations of friendship and cooperation."

With such powers he was able to contract loans, issue paper currency and postage stamps, appoint subdelegates and agents, as well as receive and collect funds and employ them as he deemed convenient.

With the support of Gonzalo de Quesada, heading the Cuban Legation in Washington, and of lawyer Horacio Rubens, he held interviews with congressmen and other men of American politics and business, aimed at recognition of Cuban belligerence and promoting United States intervention in the war.

Once the war ended and days after the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898) was signed between the United States and Spain, on December 24 of the same year the delegate announced a circular dissolving the Cuban Revolutionary Party.

Between 1899 and 1902, a period marked by U.S. military occupation of Cuba, he remained in New York in his work as a teacher. In the 1901 electoral process he was proposed as a candidate for the first magistracy by a national-republican coalition, with Luis Estévez y Romero as vice president. Meanwhile, independent republicans and members of the Democratic Union Party promoted the candidacies of Generals Bartolomé Masó and Eusebio Hernández for the presidency and vice presidency, respectively.

With the total votes from the Scrutiny Board for the estradista coalition and the consequent resignation of the masoístas, the Estrada-Estévez candidacy achieved victory. On April 17, 1902, Estrada Palma left the United States en route to Havana, where he was received by Máximo Gómez. The transfer of powers took place on May 20, 1902. Estrada Palma took the oath of office before the Supreme Court, and to the sound of forty-five cannon shots the Cuban flag was raised at the Castillo de los Tres Reyes de El Morro and at the former Palace of the Captains General, from that moment on the seat of the presidency.

The president's inclinations gradually drew him closer to the most conservative elements of the government, who began preparations for the formation of a new party, a consequence of the split from the old Democratic Union Party. Estrada Palma's affiliation with the so-called Moderate Party and the pressures from his new Council of Secretaries or Combat Cabinet, were part of his intense reelection campaign, with the consequent increase in violence and dissensions between the factions of moderates and liberals.

On May 20, 1906, he took office again as president of the republic. The fractured liberals, led by General José Miguel Gómez, rose up in arms against the new estradista government. In September, Estrada Palma held several interviews with General Mario García Menocal, in which the liberals' proposals to restore peace were presented and which at first he accepted. But later he changed his attitude, and on September 8, the Secretary of State, in the name of the president, requested from U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt the immediate dispatch of two warships. On September 13, Estrada Palma officially requested U.S. intervention and announced his irrevocable decision to resign and hand over the government of Cuba to the representative designated by that nation, as soon as he had disembarked.

Removed from politics after the second American occupation in 1906, he moved with his family to Matanzas, and in mid-1907 he settled in La Punta, one of his estates in the East. He died on November 4, 1908, in Santiago de Cuba.

Source: EnCaribe.org