Eugenio maría de hostos biography
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He studied law in Bilbao and Madrid, and got in contact with groups of Karl Krause followers. In 1862 his mother died in Madrid. Later he went to New York and from there he traveled to Venezuela where he started teaching.
Biography English Translation
Eugenio María de Hostos
Patriot, educator, sociologist, philosopher, esayist, and novelist.
With the foundation in Puerto Rico of the League of Patriots, Hostos proposed a concept of politics and the decolonizing process that is still valid. He wanted to stir the spirit of his compatriots so that they could demand their rights; he founded the League of Puerto Rican Patriots and headed the first commission that went to Washington to seek recognition for the rights of Puerto Rico.
In Spain, he associated with liberal, anti-monarchic political groups.
From Spain he went to New York, where he spent almost a year and fought alongside the Cubans in their struggle for independence.
In 1870 he began a trip to South America where he visited Colombia founding the Antillean Immigration Society in Cartagena, Panama where he proposed the creation of a neutral but Latin American channel, and free of imperialist domination pretensions,[ citation required] El Callao and Lima (Peru) where he lived for a year in 1871.
At the age of 13, in 1852, his parents, Eugenio de Hostos and Rodríguez de Velasco -notary public and secretary of Queen Elizabeth II of Spain by royal decree since November 24, 1848- and Hilaria María Bonilla y Citrón, sent him to Spain where he began his baccalaureate at the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza de Bilbao. Krause was a German philosopher who heavily influenced Spanish education ideas in the 19th century.
Krause’s ideas determined those of Eugenio María de Hostos, who saw in them a way to achieve the independence of the Antilles.
As a result, he was a Spanish citizen born in the American territories of the Spanish Crown, considered at the time criollo or “Creole.”
As a criollo, Eugenio María de Hostos was a type of “second-class Spanish citizen.” He received a good education and his talents took him far, yet he never had the breaks and opportunities reserved only for the citizens born in the Spanish mainland—who were called peninsulares or “Peninsular,” as a reference to the Iberian Peninsula.
An Education and Successful Career in Spain
In 1852, Eugenio María de Hostos went to Spain to finish his academic formation.
His model is the cholo who reminds us of the jíbaro . Spain, during that period, adopted a new Constitution in 1869, refusing to extend to Puerto Rico and Cuba the citizen rights of a federated republic. He founded the first normal school in Santo Domingo. Hostos defended the inclusion of Manuel Rojas in the amnesty group, alleging that he was a worthy adoptive son of Puerto Rico, and therefore, deserving of the same rights as the others.
He wrote Reform of education in Chile and Reform of the curriculum of the Faculty of Law in Santiago de Chile and was a professor at the Law School of the University of Chile.
During his stay in Madrid after the Revolution of September 1868, the armed insurrection in Puerto Rico called the Grito de Lares revolution led by the Venezuelan landowner Manuel Rojas took place in October a few days later.
His last wish was to be buried in Santo Domingo and that he be taken to Puerto Rico when his homeland was free and independent. Hostos delivers an outstanding speech: Apology for Truth. Check out our latest posts!
Later he continued his journey by visiting Brazil, and from Rio de Janeiro he returned to New York where he published in La América Ilustrada and continued his campaign for the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Disappointed, he leaves Spain and after returning from France he travels to New York with the purpose of continuing the fight for the liberation of Cuba and Puerto Rico.
There he was part of the Cuban Revolutionary Junta created in New York and directed its journalistic organ, La Revolución, but frustrated he moved to South America with the promise of rallying support for the Antillean cause.
In this period, the denunciation of the military and civil repression against the students during the Night of San Daniel on April 10, 1865 through a letter to the newspaper La Iberia and the speech against the regime of the Spanish colonial metropolis, pronounced at the Ateneo de Madrid on December 20, 1868.