Social justice in Diego Vicente Tejera

Abstract

The article aims to assess the ideas of Cuban writer Diego Vicente Tejera (1848–1903), who stood out for his independence and socialist views on social justice. The research was conducted under a qualitative-interpretative, historical-hermeneutic approach, with a non-experimental, documentary, and analytical design, structured as an intrinsic case study on Diego Vicente Tejera. It employed hermeneutic content analysis, historical-contextual analysis, critical discourse analysis, and comparative-analytical methods based on primary and secondary sources. The results reveal a political praxis both in Cuba and in countries with Cuban emigrants, criticizing the exploitation and annihilation of indigenous peoples, the cruelty of African slavery, and the dispossession of workers. His romantic proposals to overcome capitalism consisted of achieving what he called a “practical socialism,” which, in his view, would appeal to both workers and employers due to its greater degrees of freedom, democracy, human rights, and social justice.