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Harold Bauer was born in Kingstson-upon-Thames, England, on 28 April 1873. After attempting a career as a violinist, Bauer focused his musical talents on the piano and became one of the most beloved pianists of the first half of the 20th century. After successful appearances throughout Europe, he debuted in the United States in 1900 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1917, he became an American citizen. Bauer founded the Beethoven Association of New York in 1919 and was vice president of the Manhattan School of Music.

Harold Bauer's association with the University of Miami School of Music began through his friendship with Marie Volpe, wife of School of Music faculty and University Orchestra founder Arnold Volpe. Mrs. Volpe invited Bauer to the University in 1940. Bauer taught his fist master classes in January and February of 1941, attracting students from around the country. Bauer discontinued his association with the University in 1943 but resumed his winter visits in 1946.

His association with the University deepened as he advised the School of Music on the standards of its piano education component. Harold Bauer also offered concerts for the South Florida community at the University. With his wife, concert pianist Winnie Pyle, Harold Bauer visited spent his winters at the University of Miami until he died at the age of 77 at Jackson Memorial Hospital on 12 March 1951. For a time, supported by gifts from Mrs. Winnie Bauer, the School of Music offered the Harold Bauer Awards to students demonstrating greatest progress and outstanding achievement.

Eugenio Batista (1900-1992) was a Cuban architect and author who worked in Cuba in the 20th century.

Batista completed high school courses in the United States and Cuba and received an architecture degree from the University of Havana in 1924. He moved on to work as a draftsman at the architecture firm of Walker and Gillette while taking summer and evening classes at Columbia University in New York, eventually graduating with a Master of Fine Arts in Architecture from Princeton University and working as a professor there before returning to Cuba to practice his profession in 1939.

Batista was involved in such projects as the building of the Bay of Havana amphitheater; the placement of the José Martí statue in the Parque Central; the design of the church and park at Yumurí; and the renovation of Havana's Payret Theater. He was professor and acting dean of the School of Architecture at Havana’s St. Thomas of Villanova Catholic University in the 1950s, and worked as a professor in design at various schools after his exile in 1961 including the University of Oregon and the University of Puerto Rico. In 1974 he was given a Fulbright scholarship to teach architecture at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá, Colombia.

In his retirement he wrote a book on church architecture and the history of the Catholic liturgy titled El culto cristiano: ¿ceremonia o dedicación? (1981). He was a founding member of the Hermandad Nazaret, an exile religious organization.

Batista died in Miami at the age of 91.

Laureano F. Batista Falla was a Cuban political activist and founding member of Movimiento Demócrata Cristiano (MDC).

Batista was born in Havana, Cuba, on May 1, 1935. He received his elementary and secondary education at De la Salle School in Vedado, Havana. In 1952, he entered the law school of the Universidad Santo Tomás de Villanueva in Marianao, Cuba, and in 1953, he was admitted to the Ëscuela de Filosofía y Letras of the University of Havana as a part-time student. After receiving his law degree in 1957, Batista spent a year in Germany, where he studied the German language and took on special studies in banking at the Deutsch Bank A. G. in Hamburg and Munich. In January 1959, he returned to Havana, and was employed in the legal department of the Trust Company of Cuba. In 1960, in response to the Cuban Revolution, Batista left Cuba and entered exile in Miami, Florida.

Batista fought for Cuba’s freedom while living in Cuba and in exile. In 1960, he founded the Movimiento Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba with José Ignacio Rasco and others. He was also the president of the Catholic student youth organization Joventud Estudiante Católica (JEC). He continued to work actively against Castro’s communist regime in Miami through the Movimiento Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba en el Exilio and organized clandestine operations against the Cuban government. He was a member of the delegations representing the MDC at different congresses such as the Örganización Demócrata Cristiana de América, of which the MDC was a member in Lima, Santiago de Chile, Strasbourg, Caracas, and other cities.

Batista continued his education in exile, receiving a master’s degree in government from the University of Miami and, in the late 1960s, a Ph.D. in political science from Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

He also lived in Venezuela for several years, where he was a professor at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and occupied important positions in different organizations such as Centro de Información y Documentación para América Latina (CIDAL), Ecodata, C.A.; and Cibernetica Internacional, C.A.

When Batista returned to Miami, he founded the Cuban exile publication Revista Raíz, together with Alberto Pérez, Marta Fernández Morell, Raquel la Villa, and others. He was also the director of the Instituto Jacques Maritain in Miami.

Laureano Batista was a tireless advocate of pluralism and democracy. In the last years of his life he organized the Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba, a political party composed of former members of different organizations that fought for Cuba’s freedom. He died in Miami in 1991.

Marleine Bastien (b. 1959) is a licensed clinical social worker, human rights activist, and published author based in Miami, FL. For over thirty years Bastien has advocated for Haitian, immigrant, and women’s rights in South Florida. She has led many important advocacy campaigns such as The Haitian Immigration Refugee Fairness Act of 1998; Temporary Protected Status; The Dream Act; Comprehensive Immigration Reform; Living Wage and Human Rights Ordinance; and the Children’s Trust. Additionally, has been centrally involved in the formation of many community organizations, namely Fanm Ayisyen Nan Miyami (FANM) (Haitian Women of Miami), now known as Family Action Network Movement; the Justice Coalition for the Haitian Children of Guantanamo; the Haitian-American Grassroots Coalition; the Haitian Neighborhood Center (Sant La); the Center for Haitian Studies; the Florida Immigrant Coalition, and more. For all her years of dedication, Bastien has been the recipient of many honors and awards.

Bastien was born in the small village of Pont-Benoit in Haiti to parents Philippe Bastien and Angelina Destinoble – she was the third of eight children. Her parents were rice and mango farmers and her father was also the village’s sole health practitioner; he treated the local residents’ health problems routinely. Bastien attended the esteemed Swiss school, College Bird in Port-Au-Prince and learned English while still in Haiti. Her activist impulses were ignited at a very young age through her father’s advocacy in the community – which frequently made him a target of the authorities – and she undertook voluntary positions while still a child and into her teen years. In addition, after learning English Bastien read Martin Luther King’s speeches and this gave her a sense of U.S.-based Black activism. Philippe Bastien ended up settling in Belle Glades, Florida because of the tensions in Haiti’s political climate during the 1980s. In 1981, at age twenty-two, Marleine also left Haiti to pursue higher education.

Shortly her arrival in Miami, Bastien visited the Krome Detention Center and her experience there irrevocably changed the course her life would take. She reflects, “Haitian refugees were placed in a big compound: men, women, and children and deported for the most part, in complete denial of their basic rights of due process. I started volunteering at the Haitian Refugee Center two days after arriving. I was hired as a paralegal a few months later. My goal was to go to Chicago, but once I joined the struggle for freedom and equal treatment for Haitian refugees, I could not leave” (Miami Girls Foundation). After training as a paralegal, Bastien completed her undergraduate and master’s degree in clinal/medical social work at Florida International University in 1987. During this time she joined Jan Mapou’s dance company, Sosyete Koukouy, and met the actor and poet, Jean Desire, who she married in 1998. The couple have three sons.

Once graduated from FIU, Bastien began working at Jackson Memorial Hospital and set up the first HIV/AIDS support group for women and families. In a recent interview for HistoryMiami’s “Queer Miami Stories,” she discussed the impact of HIV/AIDS on Haitians not only the impact of the disease itself, but more so about the harassment Haitian people received when the Haitian population was singled out along with LGBTQ-identifying people and intravenous drug users as the only people who could contract and spread the disease.* Bastien advocated for women and babies affected by HIV/AIDS at a time when men were the sole focus; she was the primary source of support for women and children dealing with the fallout of the virus. Her dedication to advocating particularly for Haitian women was prompted by the injustices she witnessed during the Duvalier dictatorship; she states, “I had a keen sense of the abuses, persecution, and lack of protection for the population, especially women and children who were the most vulnerable under the Duvalier dictatorship. I can still see in my mind’s eyes how women were beaten by Tonton Macoutes with a big “baton” (club) for not being able to pay expensive taxes” (Miami Girls Foundation).

In 2000, Bastien left Jackson memorial to manage FANM, which she established in 1991, full-time. Now a large and hugely important organization to South Florida, FANM advises people on matters including, but not limited to, immigration, housing, health access, education reform, gender equality, and human rights. While originally founded for the Haitian community specifically, FANM also provides resources and services to other minority and immigrant populations. Bastien has been widely acknowledged for her tireless years of advocacy, garnering awards such as Miami Dade County’s Volunteer of the Year Award in 1994, Miami Dade County’s Social Worker of the Year Award (2000), and multiple recognitions from the city.

Laura Bass
UGrow Fellow for the Department of Manuscripts and Archives Management, 2019-2020

Works Cited
Miami Girls Foundation. “Marleine Bastien.” https://miamigirls.org/miamigirls/marleine-bastien/.
*See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka-zr-c7rLA

Rafael Baserva Soler is a Cuban pianist, orchestra director, and composer. He studied in Havana, Oriente and New York. In 1960 he moved to the United States, where he led a Cuban orchestra to performances in Carnegie Hall and numerous venues across the country.