Juan Gualberto Gómez

Juan Gualberto Gómez Ferrer (July 12, 1854 – March 5, 1933) was an Afro-Cuban revolutionary leader in the Cuban War of Independence against Spain. He was a "close collaborator of Martí's," and alongside him helped plan the uprising and unite the island's black population behind the rebellion. He was an activist for independence and a journalist who worked on and later founded several pivotal anti-royalist and pro-racial equality newspapers. He authored numerous works on liberty and racial justice in Latin America as well.

In his later years, he was a "journalist-politician." He defended the revolution against racism and U.S. imperialism and upheld Martí's legacy in print (often under the pseudonym "G") as he served the Cuban state; he was a part of the ''Committee of Consultations'' that drafted and amended the Constitution of 1901, and was a representative and senator in the Cuban legislature. He is best remembered as "the most conspicuous" Afro-Cuban activist leader of the 1890s independence struggle and "one of the revolution's great ideologues."

Early life and travels

Gómez was born on the hacienda "Golden Fleece," a sugar plantation owned by Catalina Gómez. His parents, Fermin Gómez (Yeye) and Serafina Ferrer (Fina) were African slaves but managed to buy the freedom of their child, Juan, before birth, in accordance to the law of the time. His status as a free man allowed him to learn to read and write. Because of his literacy skills, rare for Afro-Cubans growing up on plantations in this era of chattel slavery, his parents sent him to school at , in (English: Our Lady of the Forsaken) in Havana, despite the financial sacrifice it meant.

In 1868, the Ten Years' War broke out. A climate of violence and intimidation prevailed, and after the young Gómez got caught up in a brawl between royalists and independence groups at Villanueva theater, his parents decided to send him to France—with financial help from plantation owner Catalina Gómez—to study the craft of building horse carriages, one of the few trades open to blacks and mestizos in the colonial period. His successes as an apprentice led him to study at engineering school.

In July 1872, Francisco Vicente Aguilera and General Manuel de Quesada arrived in Paris to raise funds for Cuban independence. Needing a translator, Gómez was hired, making his first professional connection. But the political situation in France became more difficult, following the defeat of the Second French Empire in the Franco-Prussian War and subsequent violence of the proletarian "Paris Commune" amid the rocky founding of the Third French Republic, and soon he faced a difficult economic situation as well. In 1874, his parents experienced economic hardships and informed Gómez they couldn't continue to finance his stay in Paris and advised him to return to Cuba. Gómez, not wanting to return, found low-paying jobs at newspapers as a reporter. Eventually, he suspended his studies to work as a journalist in the ''Revue et Gazette des Theatres'', which was the beginning of his journalistic career.

Initially out of financial necessity, then political convictions, Gómez wrote news items and editorials, eventually engaging directly in politics. By 1877, his political personality was solidly formed as a journalist, debater, and public speaker. In 1878, he went to Mexico where he met the abolitionist Nicolas Azcarate, a Cuban exile, and learned of the defeat of the independence forces in Cuba and the end of the Ten Years' War with the Pact of Zanjón. Given the new political situation, many exiles returned to Cuba and Gómez made the move home, going back to Havana in late 1878.

The independence struggle

Once back in Havana, Gómez met José Martí in 1878, beginning a long friendship founded on shared ideals that united the revolutionary action of both. In that year, he and Martí began conspiring together in preparation for a new uprising; both men were appointed secretary of various revolutionary groups in Havana. Also In 1879, Gómez started the pro-racial justice newspaper ''The Brotherhood'', but its publication was interrupted when he was deported to Spain along with other plotters of the Little War. After arriving in Spain, he spent ten years in Madrid, and wrote for many publications, including ''Tribuna'', ''El Pueblo'', ''El Progreso''–each organs of the Spanish republican movement, and other journals, such as ''Abolitionism.''

After Juan Gualberto Gómez returned to Cuba in 1890, Martí hatched the plot for the opening moves of the revolt and assigned Gómez his deputy to prepare for the upcoming uprising in the La Habana province (which was significantly larger then) and he was able to orchestrate the war preparations right under the noses of the relatively unconcerned Spanish authorities. Martí gave the order for armed uprising on February 24, 1895, and Gómez helped lead the failed uprising of Ibarra, Matanzas. Initial attempts at insurrection fell flat, "mainly because the call to revolution received no immediate, spontaneous support from the masses." The rebellion had yet to gain much momentum in early 1895. "The Province of Puerto Principe, for example, remained so quiet that the Spanish waited until June to declare martial law there."

On February 28, Spanish forces captured Gómez. He was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in the dungeons of Ceuta and Valencia but only spent three years in prison. After being released, Gómez moved to New York City where he continued to work with fellow revolutionaries. In December 1898, he accompanied Major General Calixto García to Washington, D.C. as a member of the commission sent to negotiate for the funds necessary for the Cuban Liberation Army and recognition of the rebels.

During the second U.S. military intervention (1906–1909) he was a member of the ''Committee of Consultations'', the Advisory Committee charged with amending the Cuban constitution, and a prominent speaker for the anti-U.S. faction. He famously said, "the Platt Amendment