Introduction | Index | 1800-1900 | 1901-1940 | 1941-present | Other Rumbauts | Early Rumbauts | Roots and Branches | En español
NUESTRAS RAICES Y
RAMAS
THE CAPOTES AND THE
LOPEZ
The Capotes
Antonio
L. Capote and Cristina Yanes Díaz
(the sister of Doña Manuela) had ten children:
·
María
Agustina Capote married Luis Manuel Laosa.
·
Salvador, now deceased, was a doctor
and had two children: Cristina, who lives in the US, and Salvador, who studied
philosophy and lives in Cuba.
·
Pura
·
Emma
·
Odilia,
who had two daughters, Cristina and Georgina.
·
César, a doctor who lives in Miami.
·
Patria
·
Esperanza, who had one son, Vicente Alegret.
·
Lala,
who married José Luis Capote
·
Juana
María
Agustina Capote Yanes and
Luis Manuel Laosa had three children:
·
Ovidio,
a dermatologist, married to Evora Vázquez
Rosales, who killed himself in Havana in 1972.
·
Luis Homero
Laosa Capote, born October, 1919, living in Austin,
Texas as a retired physiciano. He was Superintendent
of the State Hospital for many years. He has three sons:
o
Luis L. is a psychologist who works
in Princeton.
o
Richard A. is a psychologist living
in Seguín, Texas.
o
Miguel Angel was publisher of the
newspaper in Austin, Texas.
·
Esther, born June, 1921, lives in
Miami and used to work as a pharmacist.
The López Branch
Zoila's father, Hermenegildo
López de Soler, had a
famous bad temper, but Zoila, the youngest child,
could maneuver him with her flirtatious and seductive manner.
Maybe she was also able to handle him because by the time she was born, he was
an old man already. In a moment of his temper flaring, she would grab him and
calm him down. Authoritarian with everyone, he was called "Don Merejo" behind his back, which sounds a little crude
in Spanish. One of his sons disappeared in adolescence after a vicious fight
with him.
Hermenegildo López
González, also remembered as López
de Soler, was born after 1824 in Cienfuegos. He
married Rosa Fundora Enrique in 1873. She was born
after 1850 in Palmillas, Cuba. She gave birth to
fourteen children in the span of twenty years. They were named with a flair:
·
Herminia
was born the first but died the following year. The girl born the year after
that, 1877, was also called Herminia.
·
Abelardo
was born in 1878. A list of family births and deaths written by his mother Rosa
simply says that on November 6, 1895, "...se fue
Abelardo para la
Guerra."
·
Perseveranda
was born in 1879,
·
Calixta
Fortunata (Carlina), the
one who killed a one-eyed rooster with a sneeze in the patio of her house in
Havana, was born in 1880.
·
Vitalia,
who raised Carucho's children, was born in 1882.
·
Juan was born in 1883 but died as a
child.
·
Caridad,
sometimes called Carito by her mother but Carucho by everyone else, was born in 1884.
·
Liberato,
born 1887, distinguished himself in communications and eventually became
sub-secretary in the Ministry of Communications. After the fall of Machado in
1933, however, Liberato lost that position and made a
living by selling insurance.
·
Roberto
·
Flavio,
born 1890, ultimately became head of a post office.
·
Diego was born in 1891.
·
Dionisio
(Niso), who studied law and became a judge, was born
in 1893.
·
Zoila
Rosa was born in 1895.
When
Zoila was born Carucho was
eleven, the youngest of the girls, and became Zoila's
favorite sister. She died in 1928 at the age of 44 of púrpura
hemorrágica. Whenever Zoila
heard the song "¿Donde estás
corazón?", popular at
the time of Carucho's death, she would burst out
crying so terribly that everyone knew never to let her hear it.
Carucho left three young children
behind, Elio(Cuchú), Marta and Lilia, who were
raised by Vitalia and her husband José Martín de Cantallops, which
couple had never been able to conceive. They moved into Carucho's
house while Carucho's widower, Elio
Alvarez, moved to Havana where he was a congressional representative. The
children became very close to Zoila's son, their
primo hermano, Rubén Darío.
Lilia was only seven days younger than he.
In
the 1954 Vitalia, already well into her seventies,
took a trip to Egypt with Marta. When they returned they took to calling the Rumbaut Riera children farruquitos, after then King Farouc.
Compared
to the Rumbauts, many in the López
branch had darker complexion, blacker hair, and a rounder physique. The Rumbauts were taller, skinnier and more
pale. Of Zoila's daughter's daughters, María looks more like her López
grandmother, while Estela looks more like her Rumbaut
grandfather.
Don
Merejo died of stomach cancer in 1924. Rosa died in
January, 1945.
Zoila was born on June 29, 1895 in
San Fernando de Camarones, in Las Villas province.
She studied education and majored in kindergarten. Though she came from a poor
family, she always struggled to achieve, and she had the air of a sophisticated
and wealthy woman.
Bienvenido had earned his right to ask Zoila Rosa for her hand in marriage after getting a degree
in pharmacy. They married in 1921. They were enthusiastic about promoting
cultural life, and were generally regarded as a fine couple. Zoila's family, however, frowned on the
"frivolity" of her activities, such as her authorship of "La Página Femenina" in the
newspaper for which Bienvenido worked. They saw Zoila and Bienvenido as
bohemians, impractical people.
Zoila loved to organize theater and
dances. Parties at her house could become productions, with props, sets,
costumes, assigned roles, the works. She wrote a
kindergarten songbook that was used officially throughout Cuba for over 20
years.
After
World War I, the world-wide sugar prices went up and allowed for greater wealth
to Cuba. The Great Depression of the 1930's, however, hit Cuba as hard as the
United States. Zoila and Bienvenido
did not live in high style but they suffered many losses during the Depression.
They always rented, owned no car. Bienvenido took the
streetcar or bus to work.
Zoila worked as a kindergarten
teacher and made a small salary. The average salary of teachers then was $33
per month. Sometimes she did not get paid. By the time of the social revolution
of 1933, the government owed all teachers 11 months of pay. This "floating
debt" hurt many families. Zoila later became a
kindergarten inspector.
When
Zoila was only sixteen she was operated on for sand
in her kidneys. The recurring condition made all of her pregnancies
complicated. After the birth of her first child, Rubén Darío,
her kidneys threatened to fail. Zoila was so ill that
they had the street in front of the house closed because the noise disturbed
her. She was helped by María Felisa
Díaz Reyes (Felisa), the madrina of the boy. "Chichí,"
as she was known to the children (though it was not a name she particularly
liked!), devoted her life to Zoila's children, then
later to Zoila's children's children.
They
lived in Tulipán (outside of Cienfuegos) for many
years due to Rubén Darío's asthma. During his
childhood he endured treatments for his asthma and intestinal problems. These
included hot mustard plasters and having all sorts of liquids and instruments
poked into his nose. Despite the heat, the plasters were spread hot on the
child's chest and wrapped in multiple cotton cloth layers, so that he was
nicknamed La Cebolla. Felisa
would concoct treatments using the book "El Médico
de la Familia." Rubén later was to claim that he
trained to be a physician in self-defense. During the long periods of rest he
read voraciously. His favorite sports were tennis, baseball, swimming, and
track events like the 400 meters.
Bienve, as Zoila
called her husband, died in Havana in August 20, 1966 and was buried in
Cienfuegos. Zoila came to the U.S. three years later
and lived for a time with her son and for a time with her daughter. She died in
Miami in August of 1977.
It
can be said that Zoila had two hijos
únicos, or only-children. The second, Milagros de la Caridad Agustina Emma Rosa Teresita, was born fourteen and a half years after Rubén Darío. The doctors cautioned Zoila
against carrying to term, but she was set on having a daughter -- a petite girl
who would learn the arts and perform on stage. Felisa
tended to her, placing an image of the Virgin on Zoila's
belly and praying for a healthy baby. When the blessed event did take place
(January 2, 1937), Felisa wanted the child to be
named "Milagros."
She
was called Carucha by her mother in honor of the
favorite sister, and later Tita by her nieces and
nephews who were completely overwhelmed by her given name. Carucha
was born with an artist's soul and fulfilled her mother's wish for a performing
artist. She took drama, piano, guitar and ballet as a young girl. The family
has a video of a film taken when she was around ten, doing a pirouette on her
front porch. She married a musician, classical guitarist Héctor
García (Tony) while still in Cuba. They played many
concerts together, in Cienfuegos, Havana, Matanzas.
She
was pregnant when they left for the United States, and gave birth to Estela
Rosa in Miami on January 2, 1961. This makes Estela the only one of us
conceived in Cuba and born in the USA.
It
was the dawn of the sixties, and Cuban exiles were forming a military invasion
force. Tony put down the guitar, picked up the rifle, and landed with the force
at the Bay of Pigs. He was captured and held in prison for 20 months. When he
reunited with the family they went to live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where
Tony developed his career as a classical guitarist, teaching, recording and
performing. For a time the Garcías stayed with the Rumbaut Riera family. Carucha and her cuñada were
pregnant at the same time. Carmita had Michelle in
July and Carucha had María
Aurora (Mabú) on October 18, 1963.
When
Carucha and Tony divorced, she and the girls moved to
California. She remarried there, but that marriage did not last long.
Eventually
they moved back to Miami, where the girls developed their respective careers in
television (Estela) and nursing (María). Carucha married Rafael Fiol. They
divorced in 1994. She continues to be active in music, especially choral music
direction.
In
the spring of 1994 María Aurora was recovering from
her own recent divorce. She found herself assigned to care for a seriously sunburnt and dehydrated young balsero named Luis Rivero. He and his raftmates had
just been picked up at sea. The pregnant wife of Luis had died in the terrible
journey. In April of 1995 Luis and María had a baby
boy, Jeffrey.
Rubén
Darío
Although
he was born on July 10, the birth announcement of Rubén Darío
Rumbaut López has July 6,
1922 as his birthday. It names Felisa Díaz Reyes as his madrina. He was named after the famous Nicaraguan modernist
poet. Like his father, he was later as a child to write for the newspaper,
though his focus was on items for other children to read.
Rubén
Darío attended the public schools because the family
had no money for a private education. However, Cienfuegos had no public high
school, so Rubén Darío was sent to one year of bachillerato at
the Colegio de los Hermanos
Maristas. This was a concession made by his parents
who did not want him in a religious school. He stayed there for another two
years. There he was exposed to lots of physical and academic exercise. He began
studying Catholicism, discussing moral and ethical problems. San Luis Gonzaga,
a saint who hunted birds, was put forward as a model for youth. Rubén Darío questioned whether hunting was saintly.
Though
Bienvenido had no money for the tuition, he cut a
deal with the Maristas of exchanging tuition for free
advertising for the school in his newspaper. Then, a public high school was at
last opened in Cienfuegos, and Rubén Darío finished
his secondary education there.
In
1939, Rubén Darío went to study medicine at the
University of Havana. Though almost no tuition was charged, the family had
little money to support him while he studied away from home. He spent his first
months in Havana residing in a hospital, in exchange for laboratory work. Felisa decided to help by moving to Havana and opening a
boarding house, where she cooked, cleaned and did laundry for Rubén and other
students.
Zoila was always longing for a move
to Havana herself. She decided that she and Carucha,
her young daughter, would move so that Carucha could
study piano. Bienvenido was unable to find another
professor in Havana that would swap with his position in Cienfuegos. When an
opening came up in one of Havana's business schools he applied and was highly
rated. However, the position was given to someone more politically connected.
He remained in Cienfuegos. For several years they lived apart, sometimes
reuniting during the holidays. Carucha would
sometimes spend the summer with her father. He finally moved to Havana after he
retired.
During
the seven years of his university studies, Rubén Darío
looked toward the Federación de la Juventud Católica Cubana as his community.
He was repulsed by the politics of the time, seeing mainly politiqueros
and pandilleros in the field. Later, in 1950, he
would help found the Humanist Movement in Cuba, inspired by the Christian
philosophy of Jacques Maritain. The movement was rendered irrelevant after Fulgencio Batista's coup d'etat
in 1952.
He
connected with the Maristas while in Havana. He was
representative of Las Villas province in the National Council of the Juventud Católica Cubana, and later
national vice-president, after the organization divided into male and female
branches. There he met Gustavo Riera (Tavito), an idealistic young man who had been active in the
leadership of the Juventud, becoming president of the national branch. It was
through Tavito that he was to meet his future wife, María del Carmen Riera, Tavito's sister.
Introduction | Index | 1800-1900 | 1901-1940 | 1941-present
Other Rumbauts | Early Rumbauts
Roots and Branches | En español