Eduardo Torres Cuevas Taught A Nation To Remember Fairly

Authored By : Ramit Singh Chimni

In 2020, I joined the jury of the International UNESCO/José Martí Prize. Among us, one name felt both historic and disarmingly human: Dr. Eduardo Torres Cuevas, scholar, teacher, librarian, and the kindest keeper of memory I have known. In Cuba and far beyond, he stood for the idea that culture is not decoration. It is the architecture of a fair society.

Torres Cuevas wore many titles lightly. He spent several years teaching at the University of Havana, was director of the José Martí National Library for over a decade and later led the José Martí Cultural Society and the Martí Programme Office. These sound like posts on an impressive CV.

In truth, they were acts of public service, tending to the places where a nation builds its conscience: catalogues, classrooms, and conversations. Cuba recognised that debt when news of his passing on 31 August 2025 drew tributes from institutions and citizens alike.

Our own friendship formed at a distance and then very close. In 2021, in the middle of the pandemic, my foundation, Eight Goals One Foundation (8one) helped convene an online tribute to José Martí with friends across continents. Despite time zones and shaky connections, Eduardo made sure a message arrived to keep Martí’s light on. It was such an Eduardo thing to do: when the world turned inward, he kept the windows open.

The following year, we invited school children across India to send their poems and paintings inspired by Martí: justice, freedom, equality drawn in crayon and watercolour. With the generous help of Dr. Héctor Hernández Pardo and Eduardo, those works travelled further than any of us imagined. On 24 and 25 January 2023, the National Library in Havana opened an exhibition of these Indian children’s pieces. I met Eduardo for the first time that week. I did not yet speak Spanish well, but his hug and his smile did not need translation.

He had the sparkle of a child when he spoke about books and the future. Around young colleagues such as Lil María Pichs Hernández and my teammate Karthika Sajeev Changam, he could sound like the youngest in the room, with ideas tumbling over one another, impatient for the next project. It was in that spirit that he shared a simple, radical dream: Cuban literature, freely available to every Cuban, and to the world.

From that dream came Patria Libros, a free, open-access digital library inspired by Martí and dedicated to Cuban literature. Built by the Martí Programme Office and the José Martí Cultural Society, and strengthened by collaborators worldwide, including 8one, Patria Libros has grown at remarkable speed.

Cuban outlets now describe it as the largest digital library of Cuban literature, with around 10,000 books online barely a year after launch. Torres Cuevas chaired the content commission, guiding a young team that digitised, described and shared Cuba’s literary heritage. It is hard to imagine a more fitting legacy.

Torres Cuevas’s expertise roamed widely: independence and abolition, popular religion, the long history of Freemasonry and civic association in Cuba, the formation of cubanidad. He showed how ideas look for shelter in societies before they become law in parliaments. And he did not hoard that learning.

Through Cuba’s Universidad para Todos television programme, he taught in living rooms across the island, which is why so many young people I met across the island called him their professor, whether or not they had ever sat in his classroom.

On 3 February 2025, I sat with Eduardo in Havana for almost three hours. By then my Spanish had improved, though I still leaned on Lil and Karthika for the odd knotty phrase. We talked about Cuba and its youth, about our shared worry that generations sometimes speak past one another, and about how to build a common purpose that feels as urgent to a teenager as it does to a historian or policymaker. His advice was, as ever, practical and generous: meet young people where they already are; give them real work to do; and trust them with the keys.

That conversation has since become a commitment. Patria Libros was never meant to be a monument. It is a workshop. In his memory we will broaden that workshop for and with Cuba’s youth, engaging them with the arts, encouraging them to collaborate and contribute to their own communities, and to tell their own stories responsibly, so that fairness is not an abstraction but a daily habit.

What, finally, did Eduardo teach me? That national identity is a discipline of fairness. In his writing on cubanidad, identity is not a costume for parades; it is the patient work of seeing each other fully in the stories we keep and the memories we elevate to common purpose.

In his stewardship of institutions such as the library, the society and the programme, he treated culture as moral infrastructure. And in his embrace of young colleagues, he reminded us that the future is not a demographic; it is a partnership.

I am grateful that UNESCO brought us into the same orbit through the José Martí Prize: a reminder that Martí’s universalism is a living force, not a slogan on the wall. Torres Cuevas honoured that force with a life of service.

Those of us who loved him, and the many more who learned from him on television, in the lecture hall, or in the quiet citizenship of a library, have work to do. We can honour him best by continuing his project: to build societies whose memory is wide enough for everyone who calls them home.

Ramit Singh Chimni is the Director of Eight Goals One Foundation, serves on the Jury of the UNESCO International José Martí Prize, and is a member of the World Council of the José Martí Project for International Solidarity.

Published on: Tuesday, September 16, 2025, 07:18 PM IST