Félix Varela for all times

It has been 233 years since his birth in Havana, on November 20, 1788, and how the priest and brilliant pedagogue Felix Varela could coexist without too much trouble with the rigid mandates of discipline and faith of his days remains an unfathomable mystery, given his gifted spirit of transgression and freedom, which led him to be a precursor, scientist and revolutionary.

It is no secret that by questioning the foundations of the until then immovable scholastic education, based on memory and blind faith, he promoted doubt, experimentation and verification as a way to seek the truth, and the use of reasoning in teaching, which politically led him to shed light on the dark spots of colonialism and sow the seeds of national patriotic thought.

Thus he cemented part of his greatness, because pro-independence thinking reached maturity in the mid-nineteenth century. Not for nothing did another notable pedagogue, José de la Luz y Caballero, eventually stated that Varela’s prime merit was that he had used his teaching methods to teach Cubans to think.

Versed in theology, philosophy, politics, Latin, and cultural knowledge in general, he made practical scientific contributions using research and empirics in such earthly fields as physics and chemistry, and even in epidemiology, still in its infancy at that time.
Such a valuable legacy, which by far surpassed his time, still fuels sincere respect and the need to know him better.

The currency of his sociopolitical ideology can be exemplified by one of his most brilliant assertions, when he said that education was as necessary for the peoples as their need to eat, and it was something that did not admit any delay.
In politics, his unusual gifts took him to the epicenter of important events of his milieu and his time.

He enrolled in the Real Seminario de San Carlos y San Ambrosio in Havana at the early age of 14. His vocation as a seminarian changed his family's plan for a military career. He received parallel instruction at the University of Havana and, at 23, was invested as a priest. By the time he turned 24, Father Varela was appointed professor of Philosophy, Physics and Ethics at the Seminary, where he opened the first Physics and Chemistry laboratory on the Island.

From the classrooms of the Seminary he began to revolutionize teaching methods. He taught in Spanish, even though he was an expert in Latin, and was determined to replace rote learning with the deductive method, reasoning and deep knowledge.

He founded the first Philharmonic Society of Havana, joined and worked in the Economic Society of Friends of the Country, and wrote plays presented on Havana stages, as well as textbooks for philosophy students.

Later, in the United States, he invented and patented a device to alleviate asthma crises. On January 18, 1821, Father Varela opened in the Seminary of San Carlos the first Law Department in Latin America.

He became famous for his excellent lessons. Young people in Havana would mass around the doors and windows of his classrooms, where for the first time the Cubans learned about legality, civil responsibility and the curbing of absolute power, and freedom and citizens' rights.
In 1822 he traveled to Spain to serve as a Deputy to the Spanish Courts in Madrid. He made a petition to the Crown for an economic and political government for the Overseas Provinces and requested recognition of the independence of Latin America and of the need to abolish slavery in Cuba.

The ironclad absolutism that prevailed for the colonies forced him to run for his life and take refuge in Gibraltar after his subversive stance earned him a death sentence. It was the main reason why Father Varela had to live outside of Cuba for the rest of his life. He went to the United States, where he had received his first religious education, arranged by his grandfather with Father O’Reilly.

In that country he soon gained recognition. In 1837 he was appointed vicar general of New York, and in 1841 he received a doctoral degree from the School of Theology at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore.
As of 1846, his health problems forced him to travel frequently to Florida in search of a better climate.

The extraordinary Father Felix Varela died on February 25, 1853 at the age of 64 in St. Augustine, Florida, USA. His remains rested there until the 20th century, when they were transferred to the place of his final reverence: the Main Lecture Hall of the University of Havana.