Tomás Cirilo José de la Caridad Estrada y Palma, 1º Presidente de Cuba

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_Estrada_Palma

Tomás Cirilo José de la Caridad Estrada Palma ( Bayamo , 9 July 1832 - Santiago de Cuba , 4 November 1908 ) was a Cuban politician .

Biography

The only son of Andrés duke ( Duque ) de Estrada y Palma and his wife and cousin, Maria Candelaria de Palma y Tamayo, his family was one of the oldest in all of Cuba and boasted direct descent from the Castilian ruler Ferdinand I of León , covering since the seventeenth century positions of some importance in the administration of the island. He studied law at the University of Havana and finished his studies at the University of Seville . After embarking on a legal career and after the death of his father, he returned to Cuba to take care of his paternal inheritance, and in his haciendas he tried to teach slaves to both read and write.

Administrative duties and participation in the Ten Years War

Chosen regidor , or president, of the ' Ayuntamiento of Bayamo , in 1868 , was commissioned in October of the same year by the Spanish government to be part of a diplomatic delegation would have to persuade the revolutionary Carlos Manuel de Céspedes to lay down arms. Having come into contact with the nationalist and revolutionary ideal, he became a sympathizer and sided with the rebels in the Ten Years ' War against the Spanish Empire ; in 1875 he followed the insurrectionist general Máximo Gómez Báez in his campaign to conquer the western part of the island. In February1875 he joined the troops of General Vicente García González , and supported the request for the dismissal of the President of the Republic of Cuba in arms Salvador Cisneros Betancourt . In 1876 ​​he was appointed secretary for foreign affairs by the new President Juan Bautista Spotorno and on March 29 of the same year he was himself appointed President of the Republic in arms .

On 19 October 1877 he was arrested and imprisoned by the Spaniards before the Castillo del Morro of ' Havana and later moved to Spain , first at the castle-fortress of Santa Catalina in Cadiz and then Figueres , north of Barcelona . After the signing of the Zanjón peace , which ended the war between Cuban and Spanish rebels, with the surrender of the rebel army, Estrada Palma was freed in February 1878 , but being in full disagreement with the content of the Zanjón agreements, he refused. to return home, moving first to the United Statesand later in Honduras , at the invitation of his relative, the poet José Joaquín Palma . In Honduras, settled in Tegucigalpa , he was appointed director of the postal service, Servicio Postal de Honduras , through his administrative reforms he allowed Honduras to become a member of the Universal Postal Union . He later held positions of high responsibility in the Honduran Department of Education, where he met his future wife, Genoveva Guardiola y Arbizu, daughter of the President of Honduras , José Santos Guardiola , whom he married on May 15, 1881and with whom he had six children. It was during this period that his pro-US vision manifested itself, declaring several times in his correspondence with friends in the motherland that the Cubans were not ready to have an autonomous government, hoping for this reason an annexation of Cuba by the states.

Back in the United States, he obtained US citizenship and opened a Quaker- inspired private bilingual school , the Instituto Estrada Palma , for young Cubans in the small village of Central Valley in upstate New York .

From 1892 he joined the Cuban revolutionary party founded by José Martí , the Partido Revolucionario Cubano . At the outbreak of the Cuban war of independence in 1895 , Estrada Palma headed the revolutionary junta based in New York, with the task of finding funding and subsidies for the rioters; on the death of the movement's founder in May 1895 , Estrada Palma became its leader.

The first presidential term

After the entry of the United States into the conflict, Spain was forced to surrender and the Cuban island was ruled by the military governor of Cuba, the US general Leonard Wood , from 1899 to 1902 , when, following free elections, Estrada Palma he was elected first President of Cuba.

His election was the fruit of both strong US support, and that of the liberal party led by José Miguel Gómez as well as the nationalist party led by Alfredo Zayas ; and it was for this reason that his rival, General Bartolomé Masó , withdrew his candidacy in protest at the strong US interference. Officially elected on December 31, 1901 , Estrada Palma led a policy strongly linked to that of US President Theodore Roosevelt , and led to numerous concessions to American allies, not least the Platt Amendment , stipulated in 1901., which regulated the withdrawal of US troops from the island and allowed the United States to use certain portions of Cuban territory, including the naval base of Guantánamo .

Always in line with its pro-US policy, Estrada Palma signed the Cuban-American Treaty on February 17, 1903 by which Cuba leased the territory of the Guantanamo naval base over which the United States would have full right of jurisdiction and control. , with the exception of territorial sovereignty which remained in the hands of Cuba. In addition to the Guantanamo base, the same treaty granted other portions of territory such as Bahía Honda , Cienfuegos and the Bay of Nipe , along the north-eastern coast of the island.

The revolt of the opposition and the resignation

On 1 December 1905 , after a violent election campaign, Estrada Palma was re-elected with the support of the moderates, but his election was immediately contested by the liberal faction who accused him of electoral fraud . In August 1906 , his opponents took to the streets, and Estrada appealed to the clauses of the Platt Amendment to request US military intervention to quell the uprising. Unwilling to indulge the Cuban president, Theodore Roosevelt sent his war minister William Howard Taft instead of the military., which had the task of mediating between the Cuban president and his opponents. Refusing to attend any attempt at conciliation until the rebels laid down their arms, Estrada Palma, realizing that her US allies would never agree to militarily intervene, decided to resign from the post of President of Cuba on the 28th. September 1906 . The next day, after about 200 US Marines landed on the island, the United States established a Provisional Government headed by Taft as Provisional Governor of Cuba that would last from 1906 to 1908 , while Estrada Palma on 2 October1906 he left the capital to go to the city of Matanzas .