On May 28th, 1818, according to the decree passed by the Royal Court of the district, the Royal and Illustrious Bar Association of the always very faithful, very noble and loyal city of Puerto Príncipe was officially constituted, which, indiscriminately, would be renamed Academy of Practical Jurisprudence to simultaneously operate in the building occupied by the Audiencia, since May 26th, 1831.

Thus, its objective for which it was created should not be separated from the powers and scope of that very important legal entity, transferred from Santo Domingo to the town of Puerto Príncipe, in June 1800.

And less to try to distance both entities from the Provincial or Patriotic Delegation which emerged in 1813. In the end, all with distinctive elements and some common ones on pillars of Enlightenment and modernity were aimed at giving greater freedom to thought, to unleash mobilizing forces of the social body, and to instill a climate of administration of justice and discipline among the civil society.

An early vision

About the Academy of Practical Jurisprudence. V2 this had to focus on the legal profession, although for this it was necessary to revolutionize the archaic methods of mechanistic teaching and without reflection and to suppress the readings of literature outside the cultural context of the time.

Hence, to make it consistent with modernity, it was necessary to undertake the reading of the classics of the enlightened philosophical corpus that promoted European liberalism, while nourishing the disciples of the most advanced currents of thought spread in England, France and the United States.

Such lights acquired with a view to general regional advancement would not cease to worry and politically occupy the government authorities of the colony, which ordered its closure within the framework of the second constitutional period, between 1823-1824. In our opinion, it was not a measure taken lightly and absurdly, but for reasons of the growing emancipatory spirit unleashed on the island after the creation in western Cuba of the secret association for conspiratorial purposes Soles y Rayos de Bolívar and in Puerto Prince of the Liga la Cadena Triangular, both oriented towards what that the Bolivarian independence movement meant.

The revolutionary flame

And the presence in Puerto Príncipe del Oidor who came from the Cuzco Court to attend the city of Camagüey should not be overlooked, and in which, after settling down, he began to stir up the revolutionary ferment and to strengthen relations with the Liga la Cadena Triangular men.

A brief look at the lists of members of these three entities that emerged in the city arouses suspicions for political reasons about who was linked to them. Names and surnames say a lot.

Of the powerful Agramonte family clan, stand out the Lic. Ignacio Francisco Agramonte y Recio, his brother Lic. Ignacio María Agramonte y Recio, Lic. Francisco José Agramonte y Sánchez, his son of the previous Lic. Francisco Agramonte y Ávila, Lic. Ignacio Francisco Agramonte and Sánchez, and their son, Lic. Ignacio Francisco Agramonte y Loynaz *.

They are followed by Lic. Fernando Betancourt and Betancourt, Lic. Antonio Pichardo y Márques, Lic. Manuel María de Piña y Porro, Lic. Agustín Betancourt Ronquillo, Lic. In Medicine José Ramón Simoni, the brothers Lic. Federico and Lic. Manuel Monteverde and Bello, Lic. Nicolás Sterling and Heredia, Lic. Manuel Castellanos and Mojarrieta …

And it cannot be denied the fact that young people from the island’s capital and from other geographic latitudes came to this city to practice law and to nourish themselves with current developments in legal matters and in general in Law and City Culture. One of these young people was Francisco Chacón y Torres, from Havana, Pancho *, a friend of Lic. José Ramón Simoni, and also of Lic. Ignacio Agramonte y Sánchez and his first-born, the then Law student Ignacio Agramonte y Loynaz *. It is worth knowing that Pancho Chacón assiduously attended campus to prepare. * “ By the way, another of the friends of the student Agramonte, Pepe Martí from Havana, just like the one in conspiracies in the capital, came to the Bar Association.

The outbreak of the Ten Years’ War, in 1868, and particularly with the incorporation of some members of the Bar Association, the Audiencia, the Patriotic Council, and the Philharmonic Society or Lyceum of Puerto Príncipe, proved that the ideas of advancement and changes assumed by those young people in their classrooms and campuses of the Enlightenment had not been wasted.

As the text of a Proclamation signed by one of his most enlightened lawyers and illustrious patriots, Ignacio Agramonte, he would sign it when he emphasized in January 1869: “May our cry be forever: Independence or Death”!

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García