Gómez, Juan Gualberto (1854–1933)

Juan Gualberto Gómez (b. 12 July 1854; d. 5 March 1933), Cuban independence figure, journalist, and politician. Gómez was born in a sugar mill in Matanzas Province, the son of black slaves who managed to purchase his freedom upon his birth. When Cuba's struggle for independence began, his parents sent him in 1869 to study in Paris, where he became a journalist. Afterward he traveled through the Caribbean and Mexico, returning to Cuba in 1878 when the Ten Years' War ended. At this time he met José Martí, who would become his close friend and with whom he immediately began to conspire against Spain. Deported from Cuba on account of these activities, Gómez settled in Madrid, where he spent the next ten years working on various daily newspapers. He also became the secretary of the Madrid abolitionist society. When he finally was allowed to return to Cuba (1890), Gómez again worked as Martí's secret agent on the island, and when the 1895–1898 war of independence broke out, he was imprisoned and once more deported to Spain. Returning in 1898, he participated in the Cuban constituent assembly of 1900–1901, where he was one of the strongest opponents of the Platt Amendment. Afterward he became one of the editors of the daily La Lucha, and was elected to the Cuban Senate in the 1910s. Gómez died in Havana.

See alsoJournalism; Martí y Pérez, José Julián; Slavery: Abolition; Ten Years' War.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

There are no English sources on Gómez. See Octavio R. Costa, Juan Gualberto Gómez: Una vida sin sombra (1984); and Gustavo Duplessis, Un hombre, sus ideas y un paraguas: Evocación de Juan Gualberto Gómez y su ideario (1959).

Additional Bibliography

Aguirre, Sergio. Un gran olvidado: Juan Gualberto Gómez. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1997.

Ferrer, Ada. Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Helg, Aline. Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886–1912. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Horrego Estuch, Leopoldo, and Olida Hevia Lanier. Juan Gualberto Gómez, un gran inconforme. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2004.

                                       JosÉ M. HernÁndez