In the above photograph one can see Gustavo Gutierrez on the extreme left in 1955. He was at the time President of the Consejo Nacional de Economia, the de facto Minister of Economics.
GUSTAVO GUTIERREZ: A CUBAN STATESMAN
In August of 1953 Dr. Gustavo Gutierrez y Sanchez accepted the post of Minister of Finance. Twenty months earlier Batista had attempted to recruit Gutierrez for the position of Minister of State in the wee hours of that fateful morning on March 10, 1952. Gutierrez, furious about Batista’s coup, rejected the ministerial post offered by Justo Luis del Poso former mayor of Havana and a close associate to Batista. Gustavo was at that time President of the Junta Nacional de Economia, a post he had under just ousted President Carlos Prio.
Informacion newspaper had this to say about Gutierrez’s new post as Minister of Finance, "Without fearing being wrong, we dare say that his talents have placed him there. He's an individual with profound knowledge regarding matters of social, financial and fiscal concerns for quite some time now without any fanfare on his part. Moreover in an inexhaustible and highly efficient manner, he gives Cuba the best of his efforts and intelligence, developing a body of work that few in our country could equal at any time in our history. And we must keep in mind that upon analyzing his enormous achievements, which have always been sought after in times of great crisis in the offices he has held, he has always emerged triumphant, proving time and again that he was worthy of the trust placed in him.
An enemy of duplicity, a straight shooter, honest, thoughtful and always fair minded and composed, Gustavo Gutiérrez might well inscribe on his coat of arms this famous phrase: "animo et fide;" the courage to face any difficult situation and resolve it with faith in himself, in his capacity, in his fearlessness and his valuable character.
Convinced of the great constructive and organizational potential of this current Minister of Finance, we can rest assured that with a fistful of Gustavo Gutiérrezes, Cuba would magically emerge from all of the difficulties that are now standing in the way of her swift social and economic progress. He, from his high ranking position in government, is, almost single-handedly, with decisiveness and enthusiasm, rescuing, much to the satisfaction of all her citizens."
Conrado Massaguer wrote at around the same time, “…Gustavo, presently ambassador, has a solid name among lawyers, the literati and the internationalists.”
Born in Camajuaní, La Villas province, in 1895 to a successful Spanish immigrant tobacco grower and the daughter of a provincial governor, Gustavo’s parents moved the family to Havana in 1900 where Gustavo studied at the Instituto de La Habana, Belen Jesuit high school, then earning a double law degree in Civil Law and Public Law from the University of Havana. He became a professor of international law there in 1919 and then joined the prestigious law firm of Dr. Antonio Sanchez de Bustamante. He remained a university faculty member until 1934 when he was ousted as a result of a faculty purge by the new government due to Gustavo’s association with Machado and the Liberal Party.
He was invited by President Jose Miguel Gomez to join the political movement known as Los Veteranos y Patriotas, where its Committee of Five declared him “la voz de oro” for his eloquent and passionate speeches. Soon afterwards he joined Los Minoristas, a group of young intellectuals who referred to themselves as “nacionalistas, progresistas, vanguardistas and anti-intervencionistas!” Both of these groups influenced Gustavo’s politics greatly.
It was at about this time in the early 1920s that Gustavo was chosen as government liaison for the construction of both the majestic Capitol building built by Purdy and Henderson, as well as, the Hotel Nacional designed by McKim, Mead and White, due to his excellent knowledge of international law and a good command of the English language. Both were American companies. By 1925, President Machado appointed him Counsel to the Ministry of State, Gustavo’s first government post. He would never abandon public service again.
Gustavo began travelling to international conferences with dignitaries such as Orestes Ferrara and Ramiro Guerra, achieving notoriety as an international lawyer and author. His published works received international acclaim garnering him the degree of Honoris Causa. In 1929 Cuban intellectual Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring wrote in Carteles magazine,” “Eloquent orator, profound author, indefatigable fighter, this young man, Gustavo Gutierrez, is one of the bravest representatives in the world of politics and intellectuals, of whom it can be justly said that the future belongs to him.”
On June 26, 1933, after having consolidated his reputation as an expert in public law and judicial matters, university professor Gustavo Gutiérrez, at 37 years of age, was appointed Secretary of Justice by President Gerardo Machado. This was a momentous honor for Gustavo. In his acceptance speech, it is interesting to note, Gutiérrez mentioned a wide variety of political and legal thinkers and intellectuals of the day, including; Del Vecchio, a renowned fascist intellectual; Henri Levy-Ullman, expert on the English courts system and Benedetto Croce, Italy's most important 20th century Marxist intellectual. These and others had influenced Gustavo who was emerging as man of synthesis. He was a voracious reader who assimilated a wide range of political philosophies and ideas from which he formed his own particular views, which would come to good use for the remainder of his professional career.
Due to growing political and popular unrest against President turned dictator Gerardo Machado, Gustavo resigned having lasted a mere 38 days in office. He had several years earlier counseled Machado not to tamper with the existing constitution, which Machado was seeking to amend, in order to re-elect himself. In her memoires, Gustavo’s wife Maria Vianello wrote that Machado, wanting a second term, requested a meeting with eminent attorneys Octavio Averoff, Ricardo Doltz and Gustavo Gutierrez. The first two agreed with Machado’s plan. However, Gustavo responded, “Mr. President, I am of the opinion that you should not re-elect yourself.” Machado was not expecting this from the son of a family he had known intimately since before Gustavo’s birth, having been, according to family lore, the first non-family member to hold infant Gustavo in his arms. Machado slammed his fist on the table and retorted, “And to think that you, of all people, would oppose my decision? You whom I carried in my arms when you were born and whom I’ve loved!” Gustavo replied, “Don’t do something which you will seriously regret.”
After Machado’s overthrow, the Liberal Party, Machado’s and Gustavo’s political party, was abolished and its members ostracized from public life. Many collaborators were even murdered in cold blood. Interim President Dr. Carlos Manuel de Céspedes summoned Gustavo to counsel him regarding the constitutional crisis. Gustavo ran across town to meet with de Cespedes and agreed to advise, with his legal expertise, over the crisis. His only request was clemency for Machado’s officials. His request was granted but the enraged throngs had violent revenge on their minds. The result was hundreds of political assassinations throughout the island coupled with the worst wave of arson and pillaging the young republic had ever witnessed. Gustavo was devastated at the destructive turn of events and the savage behavior that had befallen so many Cubans, an actuality that few would forget, including Gutierrez.
Having been removed from his job as university professor and ostracized by the new political elites for his associations with the Machado dictatorship Gustavo sequestered himself in his library and began writing and taking what jobs he could. He joined forces with Ramon Vasconcelos, a well-respected mulato journalist and Liberal Party leader and together they drafted the statutes for the new Liberal Party and its new guidelines, the Manifesto-Programa in October, 1934.
Shortly thereafter, in 1936, Gustavo Gutierrez was chosen by both houses of Congress to draft a new constitution, an extraordinary honor for any man in his profession. His draft was more extensive than the average constitutional model primarily due to the fact that, as he stated, “My experience as a jurist and politician has convinced me that constitutional law, in countries like ours that have not yet reached political maturity, can not be a simple declaration of principles that later evolves through legislation, customs and in practice, with absolute respect for the fundamental rules.”He sensed the need to “spell things out” with greater detail, precision and clarity. He feared, for example, that neither congressional legislation nor the acting president would be able to withstand the great pressure put upon them by powerful “concerned” private interests. He believed that greater care had to be given to the lopsided relationship between the more powerful executive branch and the weaker legislative and judicial branches hoping not to repeat the same omissions and shortcoming that hindered the framers of the first two Cuban constitutions.
One of the main ingredients that evaded previous constitutional reforms was related to the rights of the masses of humanity confronted with the rapid and uneven growth of capitalism and industrialization worldwide. This historic omission and Gustavo’s concern for “social interdependence” were to be important components for his draft. Thus, he wrote at this time, “"Those of us that are not satisfied with neither the "liberal democratic" State along the lines of the old English school of thought nor the "proletariat" State model introduced by the Soviet system, accept from the "individualist" State model (which the Marxist Socialists refer to in derogatory terms as a "Bourgeois" State) the need to protect individual liberty in order not to fall into slavery at the mercy of the Socialist model. We respect the existence of private property but not in the ancient Roman concept of law, where it's use and abuse benefitted the land owner exclusively, but rather for the social well being of all." Gustavo’s desire was to merge an individualist constitution with a socialist constitution, free of a Marxist agenda, while embracing a mixture of both; elastic in nature and converging somewhere in the middle consisting of principles and “fundamental laws that advance a system of individual and social guarantees.”
On February 13th, 1939, in preparation for the creation of this new constitution, the Afro-Cuban professional association, El Club Atenas, invited the leaders of the major political parties to bring forth their political platforms and points of view regarding labor, public education, immigration, the economy and racial discrimination. Gustavo Gutierrez, having been elected to the House of Representatives the previous year, was chosen by the Liberal Party to present the club with its platform.
The Liberal Party was the party of the majority of the leaders of El Club Atenas and Blacks in general. Their most important intellectuals and Independence War generals and military officials were Liberal Party members. Also, the Party’s former President Gerardo Machado had done the most to date for Cuba’s poor and working class, many of them Blacks. He had not only provided Club Atenas with the property onto which the Club was built but petitioned Congress to donate the funds to erect their building. Gustavo decided to tackle the topic that most affected and interested the Negro population in Cuba, racial discrimination. This was one of the most anticipated speeches out of the fifteen that were scheduled, as well as, among the best received.
On November 21, 1940, Gustavo Gutierrez was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives. Once more, elated that he would be serving the country he so loved. But again, fate would rear its ugly head. After one year in office he resigned. A newspaper clipping of the day stated, "Professor Gustavo Gutiérrez, resigning as Speaker of the House, presented his resignation as "irrevocable" due to the lack of cooperation on the part of the congressmen." An insufficient number of Representatives showed up for work to vote on pending legislation.
American legal expert, William S. Stokes wrote at the time, "Disturbances, heckling, absences and even fist fights characterized the session of both houses. Dr. Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the strongest and most able advocates of the parliamentary system, resigned as President of the House because of the difficulty of obtaining quorums and the general indifference of members to their congressional responsibilities." Gustavo’s only recourse in view of such intransigence was to resign.
Ironically, one of the only pieces of major legislation made into law during that turbulent period was Gutierrez’s own Codigo Electoral of 1943, created in 1936 and signed into law in 1941. Called El Codigo Gutierrez by Dr. Elio Fileno de Cardenas a member of the Senate’s Electoral Code Commision, he wrote, “It was created to defend universal suffrage and promote the democratic process by codifying the electoral process, implementing a solid electoral system, organizing and making permanent the voting procedure and process, respectively, curbing voting irregularities and reducing voter fraud, etc.”
Carlos Marquez-Sterling, an old friend, who replaced Gustavo as Speaker, added that the new Congress had duplicated in size without increasing its annual budget. He would write decades later, “For all this, Gustavo was cured of his political yearning and without leaving public life, he retired to the practice of other activities more in line with his intellectual conditions, which were very varied and very brilliant in the field of economics, to which he had been accelerating every day more and more…” His daughter Yolanda would agree adding that her father lacked the duplicitous nature common in politics, disliked disorganization and was a straight talker. He abhorred inefficiency and procrastination and was known for his abrupt fits of anger, as a result, sending waves of panic throughout the office and home.
When he left the House of Representatives in 1942 Gustavo Gutierrez left politics for good, realizing that his temperament did not blend well with “politics as usual.” His experience as Secretary of Justice under Machado’s final months and Speaker of the House during a conflictive transition in Congress “opened his eyes” to man’s immaturity and irresponsibility at the highest levels of government. He recognized that the best way to continue serving his country was through economics and finance, where his focus would move towards social and economic development. Here he could make a difference with little or no interference on the part of small-minded men. Economist Luis Jose Abalo said at that time, “Gustavo Gutierrez was not an economist until he understood that he could be of greater service to his country in the thunderous and dynamic field of economics instead of the absorbent and cautious atmosphere of law and politics.”
In 1942 Gustavo briefly became president of the fledgling Cuban Maritime Commission where he increased the amount of Cuban commercial vessels, thus, avoiding the Cuban governments’ reliance on American vessels for transporting Cuban sugar and other exports. This saved the island millions of dollars annually. Upon resigning from this post a national publication stated, “”When by the end of March in 1943 he gave his post to Dr. Santos Jimenez, the representatives of all the institutions and organizations related to the economic classes in warm hearted speeches and manifestations expressed their profound sadness for (Gutierrez’s) resignation as President of the Cuban Maritime Commission.” That same year he organized and became President of the Junta de Economia de Guerra, created to deal with the economic implications of the war then raging in Europe. This organization was then converted into the Junta Nacional de Economia where Gustavo became its secretary under President Grau, technical direct or, then president under Presidents Prio and Batista.
The mid to late 1940s saw Gustavo exercising his diverse capacities in the realm of international diplomacy, primarily within the United Nations. In 1943, he headed the Cuban delegation to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Atlantic City and was appointed President of the Subcommittee on Political Assistance to Displaced Populations, one of the most important and difficult committees responsible for remedying the devastating human refugee crisis in war torn Europe.
In 1945 he published La Carta Magna de la Comunidad de las Naciones (Vol. 1), an impressive 587-page tome dealing with “la historia de la constitucionalidad del hombre”. In the prologue, magistrate of the International Court of Justice, Dr. Antonio S. de Bustamante, wrote “Our well known internationalist, Dr. Gustavo Gutierrez, brings yet again to the forefront in this book not only his well known technical competence but also his acute social and legal acumen in the face of the grave problems confronting the Allied nations which need to be faced and resolved.”
From this work the Cuban delegation extracted a large portion of its draft for the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Cuba presented at the inaugural session of the Untied Nations in San Francisco in 1945. In addition, Gutierrez independently penned one of the seven private drafts used for the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, perhaps his greatest judicial achievement. John P. Humphrey prepared the first draft for theUniversal Declaration of Human Rightsin 1947. He wrote, “I was no Thomas Jefferson and, although a lawyer, I had had practically no experience drafting documents. But since the Secretariat had collected a score of drafts, I had some models on which to work. One of them had been prepared byGustavo Gutierrezand had probably inspired the draft Declaration of the International Duties and Rights of the Individual, which Cuba had sponsored at the San Francisco Conference.” It was from chapter 25 of Gutierrez’s La Carta Magna that one can find the International Duties and Rights of the Individual.
In 1947, Gustavo was appointed Chairman of the Legal Drafting Committee by the United Nations and technical director by the Cuban delegation for the creation of the G.A.T.T. (General Agreement of Trade and Tariffs) in Geneva, Switzerland as part of the I.T.O. (International Trade Organization). This was a monumental effort on the part of all nations to balance out international trade and reform the tariff system, which had benefitted predominantly industrial nations. When the GATT came to its inevitable conclusion Gustavo Gutierrez had ascended to the presidency of the Cuban delegation and when Cuba hosted the final United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment in creating the I.T.O., in 1948, Gustavo hosted the international conference and was honored by signing the Havana Charter for Cuba.
At the end of his 11 page speech to all the nations assembled in Havana Gustavo said, “At Geneva, our attention was drawn to a bronze plaque, which reminds the passer-by that more than two thousand years ago, Cesar, passed by there on his way to conquer the barbarians who inhabited Gaul. Tomorrow in this country, which only four and a half century ago was a paradise of happy and kind savages, you will be signing the Charter of the International Trade Organization. Caesar has gone his way and Gaul is now one of the most civilized countries in the world, but the name of Geneva is still a symbol of peace and liberty. You also will go your way and the sunny land of the Siboney and Taino Indians will continue its progress, until it also becomes one of the most famous nations in the world. May the gentle Indian name Havana, under whose protection the well-intentioned Havana Charter of the International Trade Organization now rests, be for everybody a talisman of goodwill, progress and prosperity.”
That same year, Gustavo became the alternate ambassador (embajador extraordinario y representante suplente) when Cuba joined the United Nations Security Council as rotating member, a great honor for any country. The United Nations was gripped with the crucial decisions of admitting Spain and the newly created state of Israel into the organization. Gutierrez and the Cuban delegation were at the center of these political and diplomatic storms.
In 1949, Gutierrez became president of the Cuban delegation at the United Nations and the following year found himself on the offence, accusing Soviet Ambassador Andrei Vishinski in front of the entire General Assembly of conducting himself like a circus clown. Apparently, Gutierrez was the only diplomat to challenge Vishinski’s declarations regarding China’s invasion of Korea. The Soviet Ambassador had been Stalin’s chief prosecutor during the Great Purge of the 1930s and was greatly feared back home. Avance newspaper stated that, “Gutierrez is one of the few delegates in the United Nations, perhaps the only one, that has destroyed Vishinski’s pseudo legal argument”and before a stunned audience Gutierrez exposed the fantastic falsification of legal texts by the Soviet delegate. He became a cause célèbre among Western diplomats.
In 1951, perhaps as a reward by the former Allied nations, he was appointed Chairman of the United Nations Economic Committee and throughout the 1950s represented Cuba in many international and hemispheric conferences dealing with trade, tariffs, economic development and finance. He traveled to Geneva, Rio de Janeiro and Petropolis, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Panama City, Santiago de Chile, Washington and New York, among others.
Between 1948 and 1952 Gustavo worked as the Technical Director, Secretary, then President of the Junta Nacional de la Economia (JNE) where he headed numerous projects. One was the creation of an institute to provide urgently needed statistics regarding consumerism, national earnings and revenue distribution and essential and critical statistical data that Cuba lacked. He was also a committee head in negotiations between Cuba and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, an economic mission headed by Francis A. Truslow. The findings produced a 1,100-page report that made recommendations for Cuba’s economic development. This report was of the greatest importance to Cuba providing a wealth of information, suggestions and guidance.
On March 10, 1952, Gustavo was awoken by a telephone call at 4 am. On the other end of the telephone was Justo Luis del Pozo, a former mayor of Havana and Batista collaborator. The words that he spoke through the telephone receiver infuriated Gustavo. “What horrors! We’ve swept away 50 years of democratic rule!”he shouted on that fateful morning, pacing back and forth in his pajamas outside his bedroom. Gustavo was livid that hours earlier Batista had staged a coup d’etat against President Carlos Prio. Del Pozo’s call to Gustavo was to inform him that Batista wanted him in his government, offering him the coveted position of Minister of State. Gustavo snapped at Mr. del Pozo reminding him this was not the proper time to telephone someone’s home and in the same breath rejected Batista’s offer.
That morning he hurriedly summoned his daughter Yolanda to his library and said to her, “ What this man has done is unspeakable. He’s left us without a constitution and now he’ll have to govern via statutes. Sit down and type what Im going to say!” A young 26-year-old Yolanda was not exactly sure what her father was spewing, yet knowing never to question him, kept quiet while Gustavo proceeded to dictate the statutes upon which the nation was to be governed. The document were immediately sent via courier to the Presidential Palace.
Batista, who feared Gustavo might leave government in protest over his coup d’etat encouraged him to join his administration shortly after he took power. Batista convinced Gutierrez to accept the title of Minister without Potfolio, requiring Gustavo to sit at all cabinet meetings. In exchange, Batista pledged to elevate the Junta Nacional de Economia’s influence and status. Gustavo had already been working at the JNE under the two previous administrations. Nevertheless, Batista wanted Gutierrez in his government at all cost. While president of the JNE Gutierrez wrote several important works on the Cuban economy and headed an ambitious project to rapidly stimulate and diversify Cuban agriculture and industry and create employment while reforming customs duties and fiscal policies.
It wasn’t until a year and a half later, in August of 1953, that Gustavo accepted the new position of Minister of Finance. Batista anxiously requested Gustavo accept the post due to irregularities at the ministry. Many newspapers hailed this appointment as a triumph for the future of Cuba, showering Gutierrez with praise. His first task was to re-organize the Public Treasury, which was in a shameful, disorganized state, as well as, balancing the books, where he discovered many discrepancies. He spearheaded the purchase of the lands from the British on which the railroads traversed the island. He corrected “squandering of yesteryear,” challenged “irritating caste privileges,” as well as, terminating dubious “special funds” within the executive branch, all of which he articulated to Ramon Vasconcelos in Alerta newspaper . He facilitated government back payments to public works projects, the service sector and sugar interests and, along with well-known architect Nicolas Arroyo, lead the ambitious four-year Economic and Social Development Plan. On one occasion daughter Yolanda recalls Arroyo and Batista flying to consult with Gutierrez at his beach house in Jibacoa in a military helicopter. In addition, Gutierrez had risen to also oversee, as Finance Minister, most of Batista’s governmental public works programs, much to the chagrin of other cabinet ministers.
By late 1954 Gutierrez left the Finance Ministry, over disagreements with Batista, to create the de facto Ministry of Economy, the Consejo Nacional de Economia, (CNE), whose purpose was to advise Batista and his Cabinet on all things related to the national economy. Created on January 27, 1955, its stated purpose was to “orient and coordinate the economic policy of the government and create high levels of employment and productivity.” Gutierrez headed this ministry for four years, and according to CERP, “The CNE’s function was to orient and coordinate the measures, plans, programs and policies deigned to protect and strengthen the island’s economy, especially when faced with international or national contractions.” The CNE produced a significant amount of pamphlets and books, in addition to the innovative use of econometrics. One of these studies penned by Gutierrez, “Employment, Unemployment and Underemployment,” caused a great stir in government and private business circles due to its revelations and warning regarding underemployment, a toxic and chronic dilemma among Latin American nations.
In 1956, Gutierrez became president of the newly established Cuban Nuclear Energy Commission and president of the Ministerial Commission for Tariff Reform in 1958. This period also saw Gustavo Gutierrez heading Cuban delegations to Geneva, Panama, Brazil and Buenos Aires for hemispheric conferences on finance, employment and economic development. In Petropolis he spoke to the delegates gathered , “We, the countries of Latin America cannot look abroad exclusively for the solutions to our problems. We believe that the economic development of a country depends fundamentally as much as on its own efforts as upon its natural resources. Our country practices the principle of self-development. By using exclusively our economic and financial resources we have constructed more than 4,000 kilometers of streets and side roads, hundreds of highways and several aqueducts and hospitals; we have acquired the United Railways of Havana from its English owners and rehabilitated it; we are dredging our ports; we are constructing the first central hydroelectric power plant and are planning the establishment of glycerin and paper plants from sugar cane bagasse; we have organized the National Finance Agency, the Cuban Foreign Trade Bank, and are organizing the Cuban Institute of Technical Research; we are revising our tariffs in order to protect the economic development of our country.”
On January 1, 1959, Gustavo was awoken with the news that Batista had fled Cuba leaving a power vacuum and creating pandemonium throughout the island. Since he had been an honest and ethical civil servant and had never committed crimes against the state he rejected advice from family and friends to seek asylum in an embassy. Yet, the chaos that had engulfed Havana as Castro’s forces entered the city witnessed innocent people being incarcerated and even executed. Gustavo recalled the near state of anarchy that had engulfed the nation after the 1933 revolution and hoped the same lawlessness and revenge seeking would not materialize. He was greatly mistaken. Imprisonments, executions, pillaging and property confiscations marked the chaotic beginning of the new regime. Many embassies were being repeatedly attacked by angry Castro supporters attempting to pull out its asylum seekers.
After arguing for hours with his daughters and close associates he gave in and entered the Argentine embassy that same day under the exact stipulation that he would only accept, directly from the ambassador, a personal invitation to visit the embassy as a private citizen and not as a government official pleading for asylum. After two weeks crammed in a room with 4 other men, he flew to Buenos Aires, on January 16th. Accompanying him was Eusebio Mujal, the president of the CTC, the most powerful labor union on the island, as well as, Justo Garcia-Rayneri, a former Batista Finance Minister and Cabinet member.
Since the U.S. State Department had issued a “black list” of Batista officials and collaborators that numbered in the hundreds, Gustavo was not allowed entrance into the United States. After waiting almost 7 months in Argentina where he was operated on for a cancerous tumor, he flew to Mexico City to be closer to his family beset with persistent fevers. Finally, in late June, his visa arrived and was allowed into the US. He was flown to Miami and immediately admitted into a hospital where doctors discovered an infected surgical sponge that had never been removed while in Buenos Aires.
Gustavo Gutierrez died in Miami on July 17, 1959. His body was flown to Havana after receiving permission from the new Cuban government and buried in the Cementerio Colon. Few outside the immediate family attended his funeral for fear of recrimination by the new government. His four daughters, their husbands and children, would soon leave Cuba never to return.
Gustavo’s properties were confiscated shortly after he left Cuba but the following year, after the Castro regime investigated and, finding that Gutierrez had not amassed riches nor committed any crimes against the state, was exonerated and publically declared “Persona No Malversadora” by the Ministerio de Recuperacion y Bienes Malversados. His properties and their contents were returned to his wife Maria. She stayed in Havana until 1965.
His personal and family life suffered due to his obsession with his civic duties; attending government meetings lasting way into the night or traveling to international conferences for months at a time or cloistering himself in his library reading and writing for hours on end. He apologized to Maria on his deathbed for not attending more family gatherings and for questioning the existence in God, confessing to her, “Do you think He will forgive me?” Tears running down her cheeks, Maria emphatically replied, “Yes He will!”
Gustavo Gutierrez was a man for the people and for a prosperous Cuba. His entire life was dedicated towards these ends in the public sector in positions where he could apply his knowledge and expertise to benefit the social, economic and political welfare of this young island nation. He created laws for the common good that benefitted the common man such as; a law organizing all the libraries of Cuba; a law creating the National Library and the National Archives; a law celebrating The Day of the Book; a law modifying the pension fund for the Armed Forces; a pension law for provincial and municipal workers and one for electoral and census employees; the celebrated Electoral Code of 1943; the draft for the creation of the Constitution of 1940; one of the seven drafts chosen for the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the law creating the Institute of Plastic Arts; the law creating La Casa de Las Americas; the law creating the Cuban Academy of Social Sciences; and many more. He wrote over a hundred books, pamphlets, articles and speeches on a wide range of topics dealing with history, jurisprudence, constitutional law, finance and economics. His last works, interrupted by Castro’s revolution, would have been among his finest; a law organizing the burgeoning tourist industry and a new urgently needed agrarian reform law. Neither saw the light of day. Gustavo Gutierrez bestowed upon Cuba and the world a rich trove of knowledge, experience and expertise, which he gifted to public libraries throughout the globe.
The day before he passed away in Mercy Hospital, Maria noticed how ill and defeated Gustavo felt. He was the first and only man she had ever loved and could not bare watching her knight in shining armor sink to a level she had never witnessed. She saw an airplane flying above the clouds through his hospital room window. Trying to lift his spirits and knowing how much he always enjoyed traveling she asked, “Gus, look at that plane flying above. If you were in that plane right now where would you like to be traveling to?” Gustavo responded in a soft, weak voice, “To Cuba. To Cuba!”
By Gustavo Ovares Gutierrez
Copyright 2021
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