Cirilo Villaverde was a key literary voice of 19th-century Cuba, blending Romanticism with sharp social critique. Born into a sugar-plantation family, he witnessed slavery’s horrors firsthand, fueling his abolitionist views. His masterpiece, Cecilia Valdés, is considered Cuba’s national novel, depicting interracial love and colonial injustice. Exiled for anti-Spanish activism, Villaverde wrote in the U.S., where he refined his realist style. His work laid groundwork for Latin American literature’s engagement with race and identity.