Hortensia de los Santos
Seeker of Ancient Echoes
Julio de Los Santos
A Medical Doctor, a Teacher, a Seeker
His Biography
Born at the beginning of last century, he would joke he had felt the shaking of the Tunguska impact . In fact, he was barely a year and some days, as he was born on June 17, 1907 and the Tunguska event happened on June 30, 1908, but that was my father, always with what I dare to call a serious joke about himself.
He also joked about remembering the midwife who had received him, but that was because his two sisters were delivered by the same woman, and by then he was already three and six years old.
His father, my grandfather was the youngest of the brothers de los Santos, a pampered child who was finally pushed into being a policeman by his brothers, as he never decided what he wanted to do with himself. He naturally kept a gun, and once he asked my father to bring it to him as he was getting ready to go to work. As a result, there was an accident and my father ended in the hospital with a wound in his right temple, which was not lethal, but left a scar forever.
When he was only fifteen years old, his father and mother divorced. He was left man of the house and responsible for his mother and sisters.
In the midst’s of all this, he taught himself English, learned how to play saxophone and made a group with other fellows. They would earn their living playing at parties. He also began teaching English himself. Economic situation was very bad, and he would tell us that he wouldn’t even have a quarter to pay for the cheapest, less expensive plate in a china food shop, which were then very abundant in Havana.
I don’t know how he managed, but he was able to put his two sisters through school. One became a teacher, the smaller went to San Alejandro School of Art. He, himself, entered into the school of Medicine of Havana’s University. Sometimes he lost a year, because he didn’t have money to pay enrollment, sometimes his beloved uncle Pablo Santos would pay for that, and other times the political situation in Cuba would have the University shut down. So even though he started in 1928, he didn’t graduate until 1938.
That group of medical doctors who graduated that year of 38 were strong willed men and woman, fighting against Machado’s tyranny, so they were labelled ‘The Porcupines’ and they became a bonded group, a brotherhood that, many years after, still gathered to celebrate their date of graduation.
It was difficult for a young medical doctor graduate to get a position in one of the few hospitals then existing in Havana, and when he finally got a position in the Dermatology department of Hospital Reina Mercedes, he was very happy. He couldn’t imagine he would have to fight to keep that position and the few hours allowed to work there. The dermatology department chief was very jealous of his position and made it really difficult for the younger doctors to practice, take care of patients and in general do what is now called internship.
It was natural then that he searched for another income, and this was teaching Technical English in the Technological School Jose B. Aleman.
Around this time, he met who was to be my mother. He had had already some years of practice and one way or the other it had been recognized he was a really good doctor, so his private practice was taking wing. One of his patients was my mother’s cousin, a woman whom she loved dearly. On one of her visits to her cousin, she met my father and that was it.
They began a relationship and all was well, however my father, in one of those tantrums men get when they feel they are falling into matrimony and panic, left without saying anything to my mother who was, naturally heartbroken. My mother was a proud woman, and never went after him. It wouldn’t have mattered because my father had decided to put water between the two of them and was now working at New York’s Mt. Sinai hospital.
He soon came to his senses, returned to Cuba, went to her and proposed. Their very simple wedding was on March 28, 1947 and the photos from them show a happy couple both beautiful people, because my mother was gorgeous and my father more handsome even than Clark Gable. They went to Miami, Florida for their honeymoon
I present here the work of an amateur, another author whose work has remained unpublished for many years. Julio de los Santos, Medical doctor, English Language professor, photographer, botanist, polyglot (he spoke English, Spanish, French, German and some Russian and Italian), loving father, grandfather and husband; he pondered all matters scientific and literary. He lacked the ability to paint, nevertheless he loved this artistic expression and his photographic art gave joy to many a guest to his famous soirees. My father wrote a book some forty years ago about the interpretation of art by Jose Marti, a poet and revolutionary of the nineteenth century Cuba. His study of Jose Marti's literary work and his appreciation of all painters of renown, and of those not very known, led to the present work.
Like jewels captured by pirates and hidden in forgotten caves, the criticisms of those paintings are lost among the many essays Marti wrote during his short life. It took many months, perhaps years for my father to complete his research because at that time, the magnificent resources the Internet offers did not exist. In his essays, Marti refers to paintings that had to be found in books and other publications; many of those, thanks to Cuba's political regime and conditions, only available through influential or foreign friends. Finally, by the end of 1982, Dr. de los Santos finished his book. Again, Cuba's political situation prevented it from being published. Now, we can offer it to the public in this website, hosted by the author's daughter with love and veneration. May his work finally see the light.
Who was this man, this Jose Marti whose work my father so thoroughly studied? His full name was José Julián Martí Pérez and he was born on January 28, 1853. He died just 42 years after, on May 19, 1895, killed by a Spanish soldier bullet at the beginning of the Cuban Independence War. He is a Cuban national hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. Martí is considered one of the great turn-of-the-century Latin American intellectuals. His written works consist of a series of poems, essays, letters, lectures, a novel, and even a children's magazine. He wrote for many Latin American and American newspapers; he also founded several newspapers himself. Jose Marti was too, as this work shows, an art critic. He traveled extensively in Spain, Latin America, and the United States, visiting museums and enjoying the various paintings he there found.