Secundino Delgado


Secundino Delgado Rodríguez was a Canarian politician, considered by some to be the father of Canarian nationalism. With the independence of Cuba in 1898, due to the peace treaty between the US and Spain, only the natives of the Peninsula retained Spanish nationality, so he became a Cuban citizen.

Biography

Secundino Delgado Rodriguez was born on October 5, 1867 in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the son of a blacksmith Secundino Delgado del Castillo and María Rodríguez Hernández. It was at that time that the first workers' organizations and associations began to emerge in Tenerife; However, despite the fact that little by little they would become politicized, the function of these first associations was fundamentally based on welfare and charity, although there was also interest in the training and education of workers, at a time when the vast majority of people were illiterate. For some time, Secundino lived in the Tenerife municipality of Arafo.

Emigration to Cuba

A cochineal crisis caused a large part of the Canarian population to be forced to emigrate to the Americas, the preferred destinations being Cuba and Venezuela. Thus, Secundino Delgado, like many Canarians, emigrated to Cuba in 1885. On the Caribbean island, Secundino joined the Cuban independence movement, establishing contact with anarchist sectors of the independentist groups in Tampa. He began to work in a tobacco factory and participated in the writing of the workers' newspaper "El Esclavo", an anarchist weekly that defended the independence of Cuba.
Secundino Delgado actively participated in the organizing of the 1895 Tampa tobacco strike, leading him to be arrested along with many of his fellow activists. He moved to Key West and from there returned to Havana, where he worked as a blacksmith in a transport company – here he continued his political activities and was fired as a result. Subsequently, he was accused by the Spanish colonial authorities of making the explosive used in an attack against the Captaincy General of Cuba.

Stay in Venezuela

In 1896 he returned to the Canary islands, staying for a few months in Santa Cruz de Tenerife before emigrating again, this time towards Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. It was from this moment that Secundino began to consider the "Canarian national question".
Already in Venezuela, Secundino Delgado began to establish contacts with the Canarian colony that resided there, organizing a Canarian independence movement. He came into contact with the federal republicans of La Palma and was influenced by of the mutualist Francisco Pi y Margall, who had been president during the First Spanish Republic. Together they founded the newspaper "El Guanche", with Secundino as editor and publisher. Despite the fact that his collaborators did not come from this environment, Secundino maintained his proletarian attitudes. Due to the Venezuelan prohibition on foreign participation in the country's politics, the dissemination of propaganda was affected, however, this did not prevent Secundino from continuing to sign articles where he spoke of internationalism, and of the proletariat as "one family". The newspaper was published during the Cuban War of Independence, and this is reflected in its content, making constant calls for Canarians not to participate in the Spanish army. Secundino Delgado himself appealed to conscripts from all over Spain to rebel against their own army and join the revolutionary workers who were fighting for the independence of Cuba.
The military intervention of the United States in the conflict in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines caused the final closure of El Guanche. This intervention produced a boom in Spanish nationalism, which affected the Canarian community of Venezuela. The editors of El Guanche and the Canarian nationalist movement feared that the Americans would invade the Canary Islands, although they continued to attack Spain for their attitude in the Antilles and in the Canary Islands. Due to the situation they decided to suspend publication of the newspaper until the conflict was resolved. In the 1920s, the Canarian Nationalist Party founded a new newspaper in Cuba also called El Guanche.

Return to the Canary Islands

Secundino Delgado was expelled from Venezuela in 1898 and returned to the Canary Islands, at a time of agrarian proletarianization and a growth of the urban proletariat. At that moment, new monocultures of bananas and tomatoes were being introduced and port activities in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the two main cities of the archipelago, brought about urban industralization. Delgado participated in the formation of the Canarian Workers Association and its newspaper "El Obrero", dedicated to the ideas of uniting the workers.
Although there were anarchists and socialists in the Canary Islands Workers Association, the position of the association's leadership tended towards reformism. Although Secundino Delgado started from a tradition close to anarchism, and had previously defended class struggle, he decided to partly adapt to the policies of the workers association, which had established a workers' party to stand for election: the Partido Popular Autonomista. The PPA declared itself as autonomist, going so far as to deny on several occasions that it was an organization that defended the independence of the Canary Islands.
The PPA stood for the municipal elections of 1901 but obtained only one city councilor in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. After this electoral defeat, the Canary Islands Workers Association quickly dissociated itself completely from the PPA. Secundino Delgado, deprived of the Association's body of expression, El Obrero, founded a newspaper with the headline "¡Vacaguaré!".
In 1902 Secundino Delgado was arrested, accused by the Minister of War, Valeriano Weyler, of manufacturing the explosive used in the attack against the Captaincy General of Cuba in 1896. He was imprisoned in the Cárcel Modelo, where he was visited by the anarchist Fermín Salvochea and by Nicolás Estévanez. Secundino's thoughts again returned to the issues of anarchism and independence. On his release from prison, after being released without charge, he wrote two stories for the anarchist publication "Revista Blanca".
He returned to the Canary Islands for some time before going to travel around the American continent, visiting Nicolás Estévanez in Havana and publishing "Vacaguaré!" in Mexico. In 1910 he returned to his homeland. At this time his son and daughter died, and shortly after, in 1912, Secundino Delgado died from a pulmonary consumption.