Varona, who also served as a politician, essayist, and journalist, is considered one of the most influential intellectuals of the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.

In 1868, he joined the Cuban Independence War and due to his bad health, he had to return home. Throughout his lifetime, he worked as a teacher and collaborated with several publications.

In the colonial period, he wrote for Patria newspaper, founded by Independence Hero Jose Marti to unite Cubans in the struggle for liberation from the Spanish yoke. After Marti’s death (in 1895), he became the newspaper’s editor.

Due to his integrity and principles, he became an icon for Cuban youth and students of the 1930s and was used as a symbol in the face of the Gerardo Machado dictatorship (1925-1933).

The curriculum for Higher Education in Cuba, inspired and directed in 1900 by the eminent teacher, then a Secretary of Public Instruction, was an extraordinary step forward in the country’s general development of higher education.

The ideas in the Varona Plan were a stimulus to the university reform promoted in Cuba in 1962.

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