Colonel Orestes Ferrara
Spanish-American War
(Cuban Independence War)

 

Orestes Ferrara, the last liberator of Cuba to leave the scene

Orestes Ferrara was a star on all the stages he went across; on the political tribune, on the forensic, on the academic, on the scientific, and his popularity. He was adored.

His walk, throughout his public life, until his last days, left a trail of anecdotes and occurrences, where gleamed his genius, his grace and his character and his inexhaustible irony. He did it as a political law professor. He did it in journalism.

With Ferrara left the last of the liberators and the first foreigner that went to fight for the Independence of Cuba and its liberties.

His example should inspirer many, especially to those who should take his literary doctrine and his unbroken valor. Ferrara is a beacon of our liberty and sovereign nation.

Italy showed greed in the talent and nature of Ferrara in many occasions, thinking that they had lost one of its best sons that having acted in the European politics he would have been a Giolitti, an Orlando, a count Sforza.

Ferrara was made from the fabric of the great statesmen, in the Garibaldian combatant mold.

It's curious to notice that being born in Italy, went back to die there, after living in the style narrated by Plutarch.

Nevertheless, his soul, his spirit, his heart, his heroic figure in arms and in literature, passage of the Quixote, written only for that class of men, will remain in Cuba forever

To Cuba he will go in not such a long time, when the land where he went to fight for recoup its liberty, today enslaved by a Communist Tyranny, which he opposed in the Convention of the men of his time. And like The Cid, he will keep winning more battles after his death.

The Orestes Ferrara that few knew

There is another Ferrara that politicians never cared about, and the new generations don't know. He was part of the literature world and the jet-set. His books traveled all over the globe along with his overwhelming personality.

Ferrara had great qualities: Talent, courage, audacity, tact, prudence, spirit of adventure, ideals, realism, romanticism, dexterity, skill, sense of limit, consciousness, An immense culture. Spoke a variety of languages and possessed a “know how” that never was surpass by the men of his time.

The fairy godmother fell in love with Orestes Ferrara from the moment he was born and granted him whatever faculties was needed to form an extraordinary man.

Carlos Márquez Sterling
New York, Summer of 1975