Carlos Márquez Sterling


Dr. Carlos Márquez Sterling y Guiral was a Cuban lawyer, writer, politician and diplomat.

Political career

Born Carlos Guiral y Márquez Sterling on September 8, 1898, in Camagüey, Cuba, Márquez Sterling was the son of Captain Guillermo Guiral Dominguez of the Spanish Army and Maria Dolores Márquez Sterling y Loret de Mola, the sister of Cuban President Manuel Márquez Sterling who also served as Cuba's Ambassador to the United States for a short time in 1934. He married twice, first Silvia Dominguez y O'Mahony and then Uva Hernandez Cata. He had two sons, Carlos and Manuel Marquez Sterling y Dominguez.
Márquez Sterling was an attorney and professor of law and economics at the University of Havana. He founded the Manuel Márquez Sterling School of Journalism at the University of Havana. He served as a member of Cuba's House of Representatives as a member of the Liberal Party and was elected president of that body in April 1936 after weeks of deadlocked negotiations among parties, none of which controlled a majority of votes in the chamber. Following the impeachment of President Miguel Mariano Gomez in December, which ended the three-party coalition that had supported him, he was forced to resign in February 1937 following a 101 to 28 vote of no confidence. He also served as Minister of State and Minister of Education.
In 1940, he was the president of the constitutional assembly that over the course of six months wrote the 1940 Constitution of Cuba. President Fulgencio Batista named him Secretary of Labor in his first cabinet in 1941. He resigned after a few weeks to seek election as president of the House of Representatives, a post he held for about a year before resigning for reasons of ill health in August 1942.
In the 1950s, he was detained many times by the government of Fulgencio Batista because of his opposition to Batista dictatorship.
He ran unsuccessfully in the 1958 Cuban general election for President of Cuba as head of the Free Peoples Party. The following year the government of Fidel Castro placed him under house arrest. He then went into exile.

Exile

He taught at Columbia University and at C.W. Post College on Long Island. In 1979, he moved to Miami and taught at Biscayne College and gave conferences at Florida International University. He also wrote opinion columns for the Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Américas. He authored more than twenty books, including a history of Cuba, Historia de Cuba Desde Colón Hasta Castro.
In 1984, the Florida House of Representatives honored him for his contribution to "Cuba, democracy, justice and liberty".
He died on May 3, 1991 in Miami, Florida. He is buried in Miami Memorial Park Cemetery.