The History of Cuba, vol. 3

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

FELIX VARELA

One of Cuba's greatest philosophers and churchmen, Felix Varela, was born in Havana on November 20, 1788, was educated at San Carlos, and became a priest and teacher. After several years of service at San Carlos as Professor of Philosophy, in 1823 he was compelled to flee to New York as a political exile. In that city he spent the rest of his life, editing several periodicals, translating many works, and writing much on religious and philosophical subjects. He became rector of the Church of the Transfiguration, and in 1845 was chosen Vicar-General of New York. A few years later he went to Florida on account of his health, and died at St. Augustine in 1853.

Though Heredia took little active part in the physical revolt of Cuba against Spain, his poems exerted during his lifetime a potent influence in aid of revolution, and that influence steadily increased until, nearly three score years after his death, his prophecy of Cuban freedom was splendidly fulfilled. He was the first great voice of Cuban freedom, the first great pioneer in that extraordinary intellectual development which made Cuban history memorable in the Nineteenth Century. Truly did the Spanish critic Menendez say of him that if his political activity did not equal that of other conspirators against Spain, and though he took no part in armed struggles, his intellectual influence was constant and supremely effective, since he surpassed in talents all his countrymen.

But men might fall a little short—if indeed they did so—of Heredia's singular genius, and yet be noteworthy figures in the intellectual world. Well comparable with Heredia in influence, though exerted far differently, was the brilliant Professor of Latin, philosophy and science in the University of Havana, Felix Varela y Morales. It used to be said, and not without reason, that it was he who first taught the Cuban people to think as Cubans. He was sent to Spain as a Cuban Deputy to that historic Cortes which met at Cadiz in 1823 and was dispersed by Ferdinand VII because of its Liberalism. Varela was among its most conspicuous members, and was among those whose arrest was ordered by the reactionary Bourbons. He fortunately found asylum under the British flag at Gibraltar, whence he made his way to the United States. There, at Philadelphia, he published during the remainder of his life, a weekly journal, El Habanero, which had a large though chiefly surreptitious circulation in Cuba, and which exerted an inestimable influence for the encouragement of patriotic endeavors. He died in Florida in 1853, and his remains rested there for nearly half a century, when, after the achievement of Cuban independence, they were transferred to his native land.

JOSÉ AGUSTIN CABALLERO

One of the greatest ecclesiastics of Cuba, Father José Agustin Caballero, uncle and preceptor of José de la Luz, was born in Havana in February, 1771, and for many years was Director of the San Carlos Seminary. He was a leading member of the Patriotic Society, wrote much for the press, was the author of a number of educational and historical works, and preached a memorable sermon over the remains of Columbus when they were placed in the Cathedral at Havana. He died in 1835.

A name which we are not inclined to rank below any other in intellectual significance and influence in Nineteenth Century Cuba is that of the illustrious José de la Luz y Caballero, who was born in 1800 and died in 1862, too soon to see the beginning of that Ten Years' War to which his teachings had powerfully contributed. "The Father of the Cuban Revolution" the Spaniards called him, and more perhaps than any other man did he deserve that honorable distinction. It was as an educator of youth that this great man's great work was done. In the world-shaking revolution year of 1848, after O'Donnell has drowned the Cuban slave revolts in blood, and when Narciso Lopez was just preparing for his descents upon the island, Luz y Caballero opened in Cuba a high school for boys. It was not a political school; certainly not seditious, unless truth and virtue were seditious. Hundreds of Cuban patriots, including many of the leaders in the Ten Years' War and the War of Independence, have testified that it was his teaching that made them the aggressive, resolute, militant patriots that they were. Yet they have all been equally insistent that "Don Pepe" as they called him was never a political propagandist. He never incited them to revolt, never prejudiced them against Spain. Yet, said his Spanish critics and enemies, he prepared his pupils to conspire and to be garrotted!

Both accounts of his teaching were true, and together they formed the severest possible indictment of the Spanish régime. The burden of his teaching was manhood. He and his assistants gave much attention to the ordinary academic studies, in science and the humanities. But constantly he impressed upon them the duty of being manly. That meant that they were to be true, pure, resolute against injustice, respecting themselves and respecting others as themselves, and ready if need should be to sacrifice themselves for the sake of duty. It was the highest and best form of practical ethical teaching. He might, it is true, have added at the end of each of his weekly discourses to his boys the words of Patrick Henry, "If this be treason, make the most of it." The Spaniards did regard it as treason, and it did certainly incite and foment insurrection against Spain. But so much the worse for Spain, if such teaching was incompatible with her rule in Cuba.