Rafael García Bárcena

Rafael García Bárcena (1908-1961)

He was born in Güines on June 7, 1908, learning his first letters at Kate Plumer Bryan Memorial (American School). In 1925 he graduated as Bachelor of Sciences and Letters from Havana High School. He enrolled in Law School but left his studies to finally graduate as Doctor in Philosophy and Letters.

Since being a child he composed poems characterized by its deepness of thought, a warm affective mode and transcendental lyricism.

In 1927 his poem Rapsodia Patria (Homeland’s Rhapsody) was awarded the Natural Flower Prize in the Floral Games organized by the then called Secretariat of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, on the twentieth anniversary of the Republic’s inauguration.

In 1930 he was the literary editor of Mundo Social (Social World) magazine and in 1935 he was awarded the poem prize in a national literary contest convoked by the Cultural Director of the Education Secretariat.

He studied Philosophy and distinguished himself as essayist in this branch of knowledge, earning in 1950 the National Philosophy Prize with his work La estructura del mundo biofísico (The Structure of the Biophysical World).

He published among others, a book entitled Proa (Prow), working also as a Professor, occupying the Chair of Logic and Introduction to the Philosophy in Havana High School and as Adjunct Professor to the Philosophy Faculty at Havana University.

He consecrated the major part of his life to fight for the freedom of his country and the tidying up of the public customs, suffering due to it, imprisonment and persecutions, under all dictatorial regimes of the Republic. He died on June 13, 1961.

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