Manuel Márquez Sterling

Manuel Márquez Sterling was born in Lima in 1872 and grew up in Cuba. Journalism, chess, and politics shaped his early career. During periods in Mexico he contributed to newspapers and published El Arte de Philidor, a chess magazine. He supported Cuban independence and worked with Gonzalo de Quesada, who entrusted him with organizing José Martí’s papers. ^{1, 2}

His diplomatic career included a consular appointment in Buenos Aires and service in Mexico. During the February 1913 overthrow of Francisco I. Madero, he tried to save the president’s life and subsequently accompanied members of Madero’s family to Cuba. His account, Los últimos días del presidente Madero, became a major testimony about the coup and the actions of U.S. ambassador Henry Lane Wilson. ^{1, 3}

At home, Márquez Sterling founded newspapers, taught at the University of Havana’s foreign service institute, and directed the foreign ministry’s Pan American office. He also served briefly as secretary of state and provisional head of the executive before his final Washington appointment. ¹

On 29 May 1934 he signed the new Treaty of Relations with Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles. It abrogated the 1903 treaty that embodied the American intervention provisions associated with the Platt Amendment. The new agreement nevertheless preserved the arrangements for the U.S. naval station at Guantánamo. Márquez Sterling died in Washington that December, leaving his history of the Platt Amendment unfinished; his nephew Carlos completed it. ^{4, 1}