Carlos Manuel de Cespedes y Quesada

                Carlos Manuel de Cespedes y Quesada was born on August 12, 1871, in New York, NYC, the son of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y del Castillo and Ana Maria de Quesada y Loinaz.  He was the third cousin, once removed, of Perucho Figueredo.

                He was educated at the Instituto Charlier, on East 24th. Street in New York until 1885, when his mother took him and his sister to Germany.  Later, in France, he attended the celebrated Instituto Stanislas, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in the studies of international law and diplomacy.

On April 21, 1895, two months after the start of the war of 1895, Céspedes arrived in New York from Paris aboard the steamship La Champagne.  He attended a series of receptions in New York and made known his desire to return to Cuba to continue the cause his father had lived and died for.

On October 28, 1895, he returned to Cuba aboard the Laureada and, from 1895 to 1898, fought in the War of Independence, becoming a teniente coronel [lieutenant colonel], occupying at the same time the revolutionary post of governor of Santiago Province.  In the Roloff Military Index, a list of soldiers who served in the Cuban War of Independence from 1895 to 1898, Carlos Manuel appears serving in the regiment, Inspección General del Ejercito [???].

After independence had been gained, he entered Cuban politics and from 1902 to 1908, was vice president of the House of Representatives.  Then in 1909, he became a member of the Cuban diplomatic staff and represented his country as minister to Italy, and to Argentina, and as a special envoy to Greece.  In 1914, he was named Cuban Ambassador to the United States.

                On February 25, 1915, he married Laura Bertini y Alessandri, who was born in Italy, the daughter of Comendador [Commander] Leopoldo Bertini.  Santa Cruz has them marrying in Rome but the NYT dated March 28, 1939, says they were married at City Hall, in New York City, a ceremony at which Mayor John Mitchel officiated.

Céspedes returned to Cuba in 1922, to become secretary of state under President Machado but resigned a year later following disagreements with the policies of the Machado government.  Machado subsequently named him ambassador to Mexico but Céspedes, without actually refusing the post, found that “reasons of ill health” prevented his departure for Mexico City.

Thereafter he was active amongst those who sought the overthrow of Machado and was linked with the junta which established headquarters in New York during the attempt at revolution that preceded by several months the resignation of President Machado.

In August 1933, Machado left Havana and Céspedes was offered the position of president.  He took office on August 12, 1933 - his sixty second birthday.

On September 6, 1933, however, after he had been in office for less than a month, the so-called “revolution of sergeants” led by Fulgencio Batista, demanded and received his resignation.

Céspedes then became ambassador to Spain until August 1935, when he finally returned to Cuba.  He was a member of the Academia de la Historia and wrote several works including, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Las Banderas [flags] de Yara y de Bayamo, and Manuel de Quesada y Loynáz.

He received numerous honors and awards including the grand cross of the order of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes of Cuba, the grand cross of Belgium, Italy, Peru, and the Spanish Republic, the grand ribbon of the orden del Libertador de Venezuela, and he was named to the orden al Mérito of Chile, and as commander of the order of the Legion of Honor of France, and of the orden del San Lázaro and San Mauricio of Italy.

Carlos Manuel and Laura had two children, Alba and Carlos Manuel.  Carlos Manuel, the father, died on March 28, 1939, in Vedada, Havana, Cuba, of a heart attack and is buried in El Cementerio de Colón in Havana.  An obituary appeared in the NYT of March 28, 1939.