Raimundo Cabrera Bosch

Raimundo Cabrera Bosch (1852-1923).

Raimundo Cabrera Bosch, essayist, journalist, lawyer and patriot. He was a first class intellectual figure in XIX Century’s Cuba. He was born in Havana on March 9, 1852 and educated in Güines. The son of a cigar maker worker, he remained connected to the Villa by his love and patriotic activity throughout his life. He studied his first letters in Güines going through a lot of sacrifices, standing out since very young as an accomplished writer. When he was 8 years old he won a gold medal from Güines Town Council as the best student of the Villa. The son of the modest cigar maker had won over the son of the Lieutenant Governor of Güines.

Cabrera wrote about Güines: “If I had loves in my life, my love, my great love has been that valley of inexhaustible greenness, florescence and luxuriance; that villa in whose corners I forged the dreams of my childhood, I fed the illusions of my youth, I felt the first joys and the first pains of life. And if I had been successful after the long and rough road worked by a persistent labor for more than forty years to taste the delights of a late triumph, I have concentrated with my memories and affection to the loved place, in whose school I learned how to read, in whose church I learned how to pray the prayer I have forgotten and maybe denied, where I had true and intimate friends, those of the adolescence, indifferent to any interest or egoism; I came out of those poor classrooms, where I found my home partner, the mother of my children, and in whose cemetery, unforgettable and revered ashes, rest.”

He continued his secondary education in Havana with the help of another great Güinero, Francisco Calcagno, who was able through a scholarship, to give him the opportunity to study at Saint Francís of Assisi school in the Havana borough of El Cerro (The Hill), where Calcagno was a teacher.

He participated in revolutionary activities during the Ten Year War. When he was 17 years old, he tried to escape from the island to join the revolutionary juntas of Cuban immigrants in the United States but was arrested by the Spanish authorities before he could leave Cuba and confined to Isle of Pines.

When he got out of jail, he was deported to Spain where he became an attorney in 1873 at University of Seville. He returned to Cuba and opened his own law office in Havana reaching great professional success.

After the Pact of Zanjón in 1878, he changed his political philosophy and joined the Autonomic Party. Having seen the horrors of war, the leaders of this party, most of them important intellectual figures, advocated for necessary reforms in the social, economic and political life of the island, without resorting to violence or threatening the Spanish sovereignty over it.

He kept throughout all his life, his love and connection with Güines. He donated the lightning rod installed in 1885 at the top of the rebuilt parish church. It is during this time (1887) that he also donated the first steam fire pump to Güines Firemen Corps.

When the War of Independence started, Cabrera is again at the side of the Cuban separatists. He went first into exile to Europe, then to the United States in the city of New York, where he published Cuba y America (Cuba and America) an independent newspaper. He returned to Havana when the war was over, continuing with the publication of Cuba and America, besides a vast literary production consisting of short stories, poems and autobiographical articles.

He was a member of the Liberal Party but was never a candidate to any elective office. He finished his days as President of the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País (Economic Society Friends of the Country), passing away in Havana on May 21, 1923.

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