Diego Vicente Tejera. Cuban patriot, poet, journalist, essayist, literary critic. Pro-independence and socialist politician, defender of the poor and the workers. Founder of democratic socialism in Cuba, intellectual whose literary work cannot be separated from his life and political and revolutionary action.
He was born on November 20, 1848 in Santiago de Cuba.
In February 1868 he went to Puerto Rico, where he participated in the independence movement of Betances. When the Grito de Lares failed, he went to Venezuela with the same Betances.
He received a Bachelor of Arts and studied medicine in Caracas for two years.
In 1869 the movement of Guzmán Blanco begins and Tejera participates in the resistance against him. In March 1870 he participated in the Battle of Petares. A month later he participates in the resistance to Guzmán Blanco’s siege of Caracas, where his companions fall one by one, while he remains until the end in which he is wounded and imprisoned. Released, and at his father’s suggestion, he settles in Barcelona. From these facts, he moves away from all conspiracy activity and breaks his first spears in the intellectual field.
From Barcelona he moved to New York to ask Miguel Aldama, who acted as representative of the Cuban independence movement in the United States, to send him to Cuba.
Once the Zanjón Pact is signed, he returns to Cuba and collaborates in several publications. Shortly after, he left again for Spain, but when the ship was shipwrecked, he was taken to New York.
When he was 37 years old, he came into contact with the Cubans in the emigration, where he met José Martí.
In 1894 he was settled in the United States, an ailment made it impossible for him to be a combatant in the new war that was taking place in Cuba.
In 1897 he held a series of Key West conferences, all referring to problems related to Cuban society.
In 1898 he arrived in Havana, and in addition to founding the weekly La Victoria, he participated in the negotiations for the creation of the First Cuban Socialist Party, which was founded on May 22, 1899 and it was dissolved six months after its existence. In the year 1900, a further attempt to found his party, under the name of Partido Popular, failed, which marked his definitive separation from political activities.
He died on November 6, 1903.