The History of Cuba, vol. 3

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

JOSÉ MANUEL MESTRE

Advocate, philosopher, journalist and revolutionist, José Manuel Mestre was born in Havana in 1832. He was a professor of both law and philosophy in the University until he resigned because of governmental injustice to a colleague. For a time he taught on La Luz's school of El Salvador, and as a lawyer he defended Abad Torres who was charged with trying to murder the Archbishop of Santiago. During the Ten Years' War he was in New York, a member of the Cuban Junta, a diplomatic agent at Washington, and one of the editors of "El Nuevo Mundo." After the Treaty of Zanjon he returned to Cuba, and died in Havana in 1886.

Three more writers of note and of real merit must be mentioned as members of the company gathered about him by Domingo del Monte. These were Anselmo Suarez y Romero, who lived from 1818 to 1878, and who as a delineator of Cuban life and customs in fiction and essays ranks among the best Cuban writers of prose; Cirillo Villaverde, who lived from 1812 to 1894, and who also depicted in romances the life and manners of his countrymen, dealing much, moreover, with African slavery; and Ramon de Palma y Romay, who dates from 1812 to 1860, who assisted Echeverria in the editing of "El Plantel," and who was an accomplished writer of verse and of dramas, and who is said to have been the first native Cuban dramatist to have a play of his produced upon the stage. The work of his thus honored was "La Prueba o la Vuelta del Cruzado," in 1837. Palma also wrote some strongly patriotic poems, which excited the suspicion and enmity of the Spanish authorities, and in consequence in 1852 he was arrested and imprisoned for a time on charge of complicity in the revolutionary movements of that time. We may reckon him to have been the last of the earlier school of Cuban writers, who had been more or less unconsciously inspired by the revolutionary era of the beginning of the century. Next came a new school, of the writers of the final and triumphant revolution.

We may indeed regard José Antonio Saco, to whom we have already referred, as one of the writers and intellectual leaders of the final revolution. In his earlier years he was an advocate of reforms in the Spanish administration of the island which would make continued union acceptable. In 1848 he had written a strong pamphlet against incorporation of Cuba in the United States, largely on the ground that thus Cuban nationality and the individuality of the Cuban people would be extinguished. Three years later he wrote again on "The Cuban Situation and Its Remedy," in which he pointed out the necessity of Spain's granting fully the just demands of the Cuban people, the alternative being separation and independence; and he indicated pretty clearly that he regarded the latter course as all but inevitable.

Thereafter for some years there was comparatively little political literature put forth in Cuba, but other departments of letters greatly flourished. A noteworthy volume of poems by four authors was published in 1853 under the title of "Cuatro Laudes." One of the authors was Dr. Ramon Zambrana, a physician and scientist of high attainments, whose poems were chiefly metaphysical, speculative and imaginative. He was married to Dona Luisa Perez, perhaps the foremost of the women poets of Cuba; to whom he was attracted by the reading of her poems. Many critics rate her verses more highly than his, and they were certainly more popular.

LUISA PEREZ DE ZAMBRANA

One of Cuba's greatest poets, Luisa Perez, was born near El Cobre in 1837, and was married in 1858 to Dr. Ramon Zambrana, an eminent man of letters of Havana. She wrote much in youth, and published a volume of poems in 1856. In addition to her poems she wrote "Angelica and Estrella" and other novels, and translated much from the French and Italian. When Gertrudis Avellanda returned to Cuba, Luisa Perez was chosen to place upon her brow a golden laurel wreath.

The second of the four authors was José Gonzalo Roldan, whose best work was in poems of tender sentiment. The third, Rafael Maria de Mendive, devoted himself almost exclusively to poems of melancholy or at least pensive sentiment. He was a passionate admirer and to some extent a disciple if not an imitator of Byron and Moore, many of whose poems he translated into Spanish with much success. Beside his poetical work however, he cooperated with Quintiliano Garcia in founding and conducting The Havana Review, a meritorious fortnightly literary journal. His career in Cuba was cut short early in the Ten Years' War by banishment for treason. He was at that time the head of a boys' school, in Havana, and was suspected by the authorities of inculcating in his pupils forbidden ideas of freedom and democracy. One night in January, 1869, when there was much popular indignation against the Spanish government on account of a very drastic proclamation which had been issued against the insurgent patriots, a number of Cuban women marched to a theatre in Havana, wearing dresses of red, blue and white adorned with stars, obviously representing the colors of the revolutionary Cuban flag. Some of Mendive's boys were present, and they applauded and cheered the women so vigorously that a riot arose, in which the notorious Volunteers caused some bloodshed. For this Mendive was held responsible, and he was arrested and exiled to Spain for a term of four years. The influence of the American poet Longfellow and other literary men, however, procured his release, on condition that he would not reenter Cuba. He accordingly went to New York and there lived until the general amnesty after the Ten Years' War permitted his return to Cuba. While in New York he wrote much in behalf of the insurrection, and he cheerfully sent his son as a member of the ill-fated Virginius expedition; writing a touching poem on that occasion: