The great Cuban intellectual Eduardo Torres Cuevas passed away

August 31, 2025

In the early morning hours of this August 31st, Professor Eduardo Torres Cuevas passed away in Havana, director of the Martiano Program Office and president of the José Martí Cultural Society.

Torres Cuevas was born in Havana on September 4, 1942. Since 1959, at barely 16 years old, he joined the revolutionary transformation process as a militiaman and literacy educator. He graduated with a degree in Philosophy from the University of Havana in 1969, the year he began his teaching career at that prestigious institution of higher learning, where he graduated with a degree in History in 1973. He held a Doctorate in Historical Sciences, was a Full Professor at the University of Havana and a Senior Researcher. He was also a professor at other universities in the country, taught at numerous study centers abroad and participated in dozens of academic events inside and outside Cuba.

Deputy to the National Assembly for the municipality of Santiago de Cuba from 2008 until his death, he was a member of the State Council of the Republic of Cuba between 2019 and 2023.

Likewise, this distinguished Cuban intellectual presided over the Academy of the History of Cuba and directed the Interdisciplinary Center for the Development of Social Sciences, House of Higher Learning Don Fernando Ortiz, of the University of Havana. He was the President of the French Alliance of Cuba.

As part of his multifaceted intellectual activity, Torres Cuevas was a member of the Cuban Academy of Language, director of the Contemporary Image publishing house, of the House of Higher Learning Don Fernando Ortiz of the University of Havana, and of the journal American Debates. He founded and presided over the Voltaire Chair for academic collaboration between the University of Havana and the French embassy in Cuba, and was president of the Interdisciplinary Chair of Historical Studies of Cuban Freemasonry Vicente Antonio de Castro, of the House of Higher Learning Don Fernando Ortiz.

Between 2007 and 2019 he was director of the José Martí National Library of Cuba and of that institution's journal.

Throughout his long and productive intellectual career, Professor Torres Cuevas maintained a special attachment to the University of Havana. He was a diligent researcher of the process of formation of the Cuban nation and of the evolution of thought and political ideas in our country.

The merits of his extraordinary scientific research work led him to be a member of the National Commission of Scientific Degrees of the Republic of Cuba, of the Scientific Council of the Institute of History of Cuba and of the National Commission of the History Career. He was part of the Ideological Commission of the Central Committee of the Party, of the Working Group for the creation of the Fidel Castro Ruz Center and of the Editorial Commission of the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, approved in 2019.

He was an Honorary member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (Uneac) and of the National Union of Historians of Cuba (Unhic).

Eduardo Torres Cuevas is the author, co-author or coordinator of more than 60 books and dozens of articles. In 2007 he was one of the writers to whom the XVI International Book Fair of Havana was dedicated.

The courses that Torres Cuevas designed and taught are still very well remembered and remain fully relevant: Cuba: the dream of the possible. History of the formation and liberation of the Cuban people and nation, and Those who thought of Cuba, for the space University for Everyone of Cuban Television.

He received numerous decorations and distinctions, in Cuba and abroad, including the Félix Varela Order of the First Degree, the Replica of Máximo Gómez's Machete, the Frank País Order of the First and Second Degree and the Carlos J. Finlay Order.

His companion and friend, the great historian Eusebio Leal, referring to Torres Cuevas, said that he was «...by his exceptional talent and capacity, one of the most brilliant Cuban intellectuals. He is possessed -said Eusebio then- of the equilibrium, moral greatness and deep Cubanness that are essential to understand and analyze social processes. He is of such sobriety and such elevated ethical concept that always, despite our fraternal friendship, when I find myself before him, I experience that rare and pleasant sensation of the disciple before the master».

The work of Eduardo Torres Cuevas is a pillar of scientific and pedagogical thought produced by the Revolution. Present and future generations will find in it an inexhaustible wealth of knowledge and patriotism.