Cirilo Villaverde

Cirilo Villaverde was born on October 28, 1812, on a sugar plantation in Pinar del Río, where he observed firsthand the horrors of chattel slavery. Graduating in law in Havana, he turned to anti-colonial politics and literature.

Imprisoned by Spanish authorities in 1848 for conspiratorial activity, he escaped to the United States. In New York, he spent decades refining his magnum opus, Cecilia Valdés o La Loma del Ángel, published in full in 1882. The novel remains the supreme realist masterpiece of 19th-century Cuban literature.