José Agustín Félix Arango y Ramírez was born in the town of Puerto Príncipe, on November 19th, 1797. His father was the notable creole lawyer José Gabriel Arango del Risco, defender of liberalism, a member since its foundation in 1821 of the secret association Chain Union, Triangular Chain or Electric Chain of Puerto Príncipe; non-Masonic organization that would act in coordination with its homologous association in Havana: Soles y Rayos de Bolívar.

In Puerto Príncipe the Arangos lived in the house marked with number 16 in Soledad Street (today Ignacio Agramonte Street). José Agustín moved to Havana to pursue higher education at the University of San Jerónimo, following the family tradition that his father had started. In that campus he obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Civil and Canon Law, on March 30th, 1820, a document that he presented upon arrival in Puerto Príncipe for its examination and accreditation before the City Council, on April 6th, 1821.

It is worth noting that while José Agustín Arango was pursuing higher education, the second constitutional period in Cuba (1820-1823) was reintroduced. A situation used by Arango and other fellow students to end with the liberal reformism, which had made an impression on the livestock oligarchy and the lobbyists of Puerto Príncipe. The people of Camagüey had no property or slaves to defend.

Ideology and Actions

Armed with solid criteria in favor of a structural change on the Island, he joined the liberal / radical and enlightened minority sector that would dissent from the liberal / constitutional regime opposed to the independence revolution. From the original liberal and constitutional alternative, Arango began to assume a much more radical attitude, according to the very nature of the conspiracy Rayos y Soles de Bolívar, a group of Creoles that proclaimed that the revolution for independence was an irreversible necessity in the largest of the Antilles.

Arango immediately joined the board of directors of the Puerto Príncipe Triangular Chain and was among the masterminds and perpetrators of the attempted execution of the peninsular count of Villamar Santiago Hernández y Rivadeneyra and his son in the Arms Square. He was also involved in the execution of a first traitor of the Camagüey conspiratorial movement, where he would be the victim of a shot perpetrated by the infants of the León Battalion, because he was declared outlawed by the highest authorities of the Island. Those were enough reasons to leave for Philadelphia and New York to, within the Cuban Patriotic Board, prepare for the independence of Cuba, and from there, and start to request Bolívar’s support for Cuban independence; reason for which he became involved with important Camagüey patriots, such as Francisco Agüero Velazco (Frasquito).

With this objective and in the company of a revolutionary group, he traveled to Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, a country where he held around five friendly meetings with Bolívar and several of his most trusted officers, to receive from the Liberator his political and material support for the projects of Cuban emancipation. In the middle of the war that was being fought against the royalist forces in that region of America, Arango was given the position of War Auditor and participated in the combat of El Callao and in other military actions waged by the Bolivarian forces, throughout the year 1825.

In the midst of the heat of the war between royalists and Bolivarian patriots, Arango secretly came to Cuba on two occasions to give encouragement and strength to the island’s conspirators. Back in Gran Colombia, he received instructions from Bolívar to fill the post of secretary of the Peruvian delegation, which was supposed to attend the Amphictyonic Congress of Panama, in 1826; responsibility that he carried out with great audacity and intelligence, to try to frustrate the expansionist aims of the North American, British and French delegation. Later, between the years 1836 and 1840, he would go on to fill the post of Interior Secretary in Colombia.

In those nations, he strengthened Cuba’s friendship with most of the independence leaders in Latin America.

His death

Back in Panama, unable to live free in colonial Cuba, he married Tomasa Remón Sopardo, on March 19th, 1836, from whose marriage they had three children. Surrounded by humility and family modesty, perhaps with the longing of wanting to return to his hometown to give continuity to the liberation projects, death took him early on March 18th, 1846, at the age of 48.

One of his companions through the Latin American continent, Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, El Lugareño, said years later: Agustín Arango was a good lawyer and one of the most passionate liberals in Puerto Príncipe …”

At least his birth house should have on the wall of its façade a bronze plaque with his name on it, and the recognition of the good people of Camagüey who are grateful for his struggles and his efforts to bring two peoples and two nations closer together with the same purpose: Latin American Freedom.

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García