Estrada Palma, Tomás (1835-1908)

Cuban revolutionary, the country's first president 1902-06. During the 1890s, as head of the Cuban revolutionary junta in New York, he secured US financial and military support for the independence struggle and in 1901 was elected president of the Cuban Republic. He attracted US financial aid and inward economic investment and, standing as the Moderate Party candidate, was re-elected president in 1906. However, the defeated opposition Liberals refused to accept his victory and forced his resignation later in 1906, leading to a three-year period of US rule.

A Protestant in a largely Catholic country, Estrada was born near Bayamo, in eastern Cuba. During the Ten Years' War 1868-78 against Spanish colonial rule, he reached the rank of general and served briefly from 1877 as president of the provisional republic. He was imprisoned by the Spanish and, after his release, spent the 1880s in Honduras and the USA, where he was principal of a Quaker School for Latin American boys, in Central Valley, New York.