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César A. Mena Serra was born in Güines, province of La Habana, Cuba, in 1914. He graduated from the University of Havana with degrees in medicine and dentistry. Dr. Mena was a professor of pharmacology and physiology, of the School of Dentistry at the University of Havana until 1959. When Castro seized power in Cuba, Dr. Mena left to Miami as an exile.

Dr. Mena was a founding member of the Cuban Society of the Medical History, member of the American Society of Medicine, the Society of Medical History in Venezuela, and member of the American Academy of the History of Dentistry. He served for four terms as secretary of Retiro Odontológico in Exile. Dr. Mena was the executive director of dental services for Miami-Dade County’s health department until his retirement in 1991.

Dr. Mena has published articles in many scientific journals of Latin America and the United States. He is the author of several books: Historia de los dentistas que lucharon en las Guerras de la Independencia (History of the dentists who fought in Cuban Independence Wars); Historia de la odontología en Cuba, 1492 1980 (History of Dentistry in Cuba 1492 1980); Historia de la medicina en Cuba (History of the Medicine in Cuba; and Santa Apolonia: Patrona dental (Saint Apolonia: Dental Patron).

Luis Felipe Mencía was a medical doctor, professor, and author.

Mencía was born in Havana, Cuba, on April 22, 1922. He went to the Ruston Academy and to the Institute of Secondary Education of Havana from 1927 through 1939. He attended the School of Medicine of the University of Havana and obtained his medical degree in 1946.

Mencía did his first internship at the General Calixto García University Hospital (straight surgical), in Havana, Cuba, from 1947 to 1948. From 1949 to 1953 he acted as assistant resident in surgery at Yale University Hospital.

Dr. Mencía was an important member of different medical societies, in Cuba and the United States, since 1951. He received several academic appointments starting at Yale University School of Medicine, where he served as instructor in thoracic surgery in 1952, and at the University of Havana School of Medicine, from 1954 to 1960, in the same role. He left Cuba as an exile in the early 1960s and was appointed as a fellow in pediatric surgery at the Variety Children's Hospital, Miami, Florida, 1961-1964; clinical instructor in surgery in the Division of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine, 1963-1968; and in 1968 he became clinical assistant professor of surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine. From 1970 to 1987, Mencía was a senior attending pediatric surgeon at the Variety Children’s Hospital, and in 1988, he was appointed surgeon emeritus at the Variety Miami Children’s Hospital.

Luis Felipe Mencía published 20 medical articles (Spanish and English) on thoracic surgery, pediatric surgery and general surgery. These articles were published in important medical journals in Cuba and in the United States, from 1946 to 1977. His last publication was a booklet titled “Recuerdos de la Cirugía en Cuba” published in 1990 in Miami, Florida. This booklet documents the history of surgery in Cuba during the decades of 1920 to 1960.

Luis F. Mencía died in Miami on July 18, 1990.

Elia Rosa Fernández de Mendia was a Cuban sculptor, potter, and clay worker. She studied ceramics in New York. She also started a studio in the Santiago de las Vegas area of Havana, Cuba. She had a ceramics exposition with three other artists, Amelia Pelaez, Maria Garcia Buch, and Rebeca Robes at the Lyceum y Lawn Tennis Club in 1961. She sat on the Directive board of the Lyceum y Lawn Tennis Club, heading the exhibitions committee.

María Mendoza Kranz was born in Key West, Florida. She is a member of a third generation of the Mendoza family that emigrated from Cuba to Key West in the early 1870s to escape Spanish colonial rule. Her grandfather, José González de Mendoza, was one of the founders of the school at the Club San Carlos in Key West.

Mendoza Kranz’s father, Enrique González de Mendoza, who was born in Key West, is said to have introduced Cuban rumba to Miami in the 1930s. He also organized the “El Dulce” rumba band that played at the Roney Plaza Hotel in Miami Beach.

Mendoza Kranz was the first Spanish-speaking salesperson employed by S.H. Kress & Co. in downtown Miami and also among the first women to work at a Miami aircraft factory during World War II. Since 1979, she has taught line dancing to Hispanic senior citizens.

Tony Mendoza was born on July 21, 1941 in Havana, Cuba. After migrating to the United States in 1960 and adjusting to his new life in Miami, Florida, he received a Bachelor of Engineering from Yale University and later attended Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 1973, he began to mainly focus on photography. In 1988, he became a professor of photography at Ohio State University. He has received over ten fellowships, including the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts.

Guillermo Meneses (15 December 1911 - 29 December 1978) was a Venezuelan writer, playwright, and journalist. He graduated from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, majoring in Political Sciences, and worked as a state attorney and judge. However, he became nationally renowned primarily for his fictional writing and its screen versions. His short story “La Balandra Isabel Llegó Esta Tarde,” was adapted for the cinema and for TV under the direction of Carlos Hugo Christensen. He was the recipient of a number of prizes, including the Premio de Teatro de Caracas (1943) for the play El Marido de Nieves Márquez, the Premio Arístides Rojas (1952) for the novel El Falso Cuaderno de Narciso Espejo, and the Venezuelan National Prize for Literature (1967) for his whole body of work.

In addition to literature, politics played a significant role in Meneses’ trajectory. At the age of 17, he joined a student-led movement later known as the “Generación del 28,” in opposition to the military government of Juan Vicente Gomez (1931-1935). As a consequence, he was arrested along with other members of the group. His activist vein also manifested in his writings for the periodicals Élite, Sábado (de Colombia), El Nacional, and El Universal, and in his own magazine, Cubagua (1938).

Guillermo Meneses married the journalist Sofía Ímber in 1944, and they had four children: Sara, Adriana, Daniela, and Pedro. They left Venezuela to live in Bogota following the coup d'etat against president Isaias Medina in 1945, and the family soon moved to France in 1949, when Guillermo assumed a diplomatic position after being nominated by president Rómulo Gallegos. In the following years, during the regime of General Marcos Perez Jimenez, Meneses continued diplomatic service as secretary of the Venezuelan embassy in Paris and Brussels. There, Sofía and Guillermo became close to thinkers and artists, such as Picasso, Andre Malraux, and William Faulkner, in addition to Venezuelan expatriate intellectuals. As soon as General Jimenez’s regime came to an end, Meneses had his diplomatic post terminated, and the family returned to Venezuela. With a keen desire to share his ideas to a wider national audience, Meneses and Sofía created CAL (acronym for Criticism, Art, Literature) magazine in collaboration with the designer Nedo MF. The publication provided a platform for experimentation, combining the arts and thought in a Venezuelan context.

He eventually passed away at 67 years old in Caracas, Venezuela.

–Vanessa Rodrigues Barcelos da Silva
Graduate Student Assistant for Manuscripts and Archives Management, Summer 2024

Sources: https://www.voanews.com/a/venezuelan-art-promoter-journalist-sofia-imber-dies/3733068.html https://www.artnexus.com/en/news/5d5c2594c70855f6b9ef74b5/sofia-imber https://www.venezuelatuya.com/biografias/guillermo_meneses.htm#
Gil, Diego Arroyo. La senora Imber: Genio y Figura. Editorial Planeta Venezoelana, 2016.