Havana, May 8th, 1867 “… I want for you, as well as for myself, a supreme happiness that the imagination presents to me; something far superior to everything that is

Vélez was born in 1869, at the height of the struggles for Cuban independence. His father Vicente Vélez Piloña, a mambí, was married to Luisa Vázquez, both from Puerto Príncipe.