Jorge Mañach

Jorge Manach y Robato ( born February 14, 1898 in Sagua la Grande, Villa Clara, Cuba, † June 25, 1961 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) was a Cuban writer, jurist, politician and foreign minister who for criticizing Fidel Castro's government had to go into exile.

Biography

Manach, son of a Spaniard and a Cuban, was educated in Cuba, Spain, the United States and France. In 1920, he graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Philosophy. He then continued his education at the Université du Droit et de la Santé in Lille and the University of Havana. Around 1939, he taught at Columbia University in New York and to 1960 at the University of Havana.

In 1927 he founded the magazine Revista de Havana in Avance, which was published until 1930. In 1932 and 1933 he was involved among other things as the author of the political program he co-founded the underground grouping ABC in the revolution against the dictator Gerardo Machado. When the ABC then openly appeared as a political party, Manach was first elected to the House of Representatives and later the Senate, and was vice-president of the Constituent Assembly, which approved the Constitution of 1940. In 1933 his biography of the Cuban independence hero José Martí, whose political ideas he defended as still relevant and current. In 1934 he won the highly doped and this year for the first time awarded National Journalism Award " Justo de Lara ". In 1944, he served for several months as Cuban Foreign Minister. In 1945 he gathered in his house 37 authors establishing the Cuban PEN Club, whose president he was elected. From 1947 to 1955 he was a leading member of the social democratic Partido del Pueblo Cubano ( Ortodoxos ). For authored by Ortodoxos Party Member Fidel Castro in captivity pamphlet "History will absolve me," he wrote in 1954 a preface. During the fighting of his authoritarian and undemocratic rule Fulgencio Batista ( since 1952), he went into exile in Spain in 1957, from where he returned to Cuba in February 1959. Because of his criticism of the government of Fidel Castro Manach 1960 forced to leave the country, along with his family, he lived in Puerto Rico. He died there on June 25, 1961 in San Juan.

Jorge Manach was married to Margot Baños, from the marriage was a son, Jorge Manach - Baños forth. His cousin ( first degree) Edelmira Sampedro - Robato married in 1933 Prince Alfonso de Borbon Pius, eldest son of the Spanish King Alfonso XIII.

Literature on Jorge Manach

• Rigoberto Segreo and Margarita Segura: Más allá del mito: Jorge Manach y la Revolución Cubana. Oriente, Santiago de Cuba 2012 ( Spanish)