The Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén was born in the provincial town of Camagüey, in Eastern Cuba, to mulatto parents (i.e. people of mixed sub-Saharan African and European ancestry) in 1902. It was in this same year that Cuba formally achieved independence from Spain as a result of the Spanish-American War of 1898. His father was a newspaper editor and Liberal politician and the family were arguably part of the growing black middle-class during Guillén's early years. Nevertheless, Guillén's father was assassinated for his role in a political uprising in 1917 and Guillén became, at age fourteen, the main bread-winner for his mother and five younger siblings as the family struggled to survive. Furthermore, contemporary Cuban society, having only recently officially outlawed slavery (1886), still practised substantial racial discrimination against blacks of all social classes, and,...
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Citation: Pitman, Thea. "Nicolás Guillén". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 July 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=12221, accessed 09 June 2026.]
