TINA MONTALVO Herald Staff Writer

Carlos Marquez Sterling, the leader of the 1940 convention that drafted Cuba's most progressive constitution, will join the Florida International University faculty this week. "He's one of my heroes in modern Cuban history," said Miguel Bretos, director of the Cuban Exile History and Archives project at FIU.

Marquez Sterling, 87, will start at FIU on Thursday as a visiting professor. He'll conduct four seminars on the constitutions of Cuba, the United States, and Latin American countries. The first will deal with issues and events that culminated with the 1940 Cuban constitution.

That year, Marquez Sterling led 76 delegates from across Cuba in drafting a document that is still considered one of the most sweeping of its time.

The delegates represented 11 factions from all points on the political spectrum. With Marquez Sterling as president of the constitutional convention, they adopted a document that recognized all Cubans as equal under the law, called for the breakup of large land estates and granted citizens the right to work.

It addressed almost every aspect of civic, cultural and social life. It called for alimony and child support. Illegitimate children were given legal rights. So were unmarried couples who lived together.

Marquez Sterling found the social discrimination that was common before the constitution's adoption "depressing."

"It was our success that corrected many of Cuba's social problems," he said last week.

"It was downright avant-garde," Bretos said.

The convention came after a period of political trauma that included the fall of President Gerardo Machado in 1933, followed by a string of provisional governments. In 1939, delegates were elected to forge a new order for the island. The 76, splintered in their ideologies, were also divided in their support of the government. Half were aligned to Fulgencio Batista, who ran the country behind figurehead President Federico Laredo Bru, while the others supported Ramon Grau San Martin, who won the presidency in 1944.

The constitution took six months to draft. It replaced the constitution of 1901, which was approved under the eye of the U.S. government. The 1940 constitution had 19 chapters divided into 32 sections and 286 subsections, in sheer size a giant compared with the United States' constitution, which has a preamble, seven articles and 26 amendments.

The 1940 constitution called for implementing reforms over time. But many were ignored during bitter fights for control of the Cuban government.

One part was followed closely: a section giving citizens the right to work. It made way for a powerful Cuban labor movement.

After the constitutional convention, Marquez Sterling returned to practicing law and teaching political science at the University of Havana.

Fidel Castro was one of Marquez Sterling's students in the early 1950s. Even then, the professor saw in Castro extreme leftist beliefs and anti-U.S. sentiments. Marquez Sterling attributed Castro's attitudes to his Spanish father, who fought on Spain's side in Cuba's war for independence.

By 1958, the constitution had become all but irrelevant under Batista, who had taken control of the government through a coup. The year before there had been three assassination attempts against Marquez Sterling.

The professor ran for the presidency in 1958, but failed. The country was already primed for revolution.

"We wanted to prevent Castro from coming to power," Marquez Sterling said. "And we planned to reinstate the constitution."

In 1959 he fled Cuba after being placed under house arrest by the new Castro government.

He moved to New York, teaching for two years at Columbia University and for 13 at C.W. Post College on Long Island. Since moving to Miami in 1979, he has taught at St. Thomas University and written columns for Diario Las Americas.

He has published a history of Cuba, a history of the United States, a book on the "moral forces of democracy," and biographies of his father, diplomat Manuel Marquez Sterling, Cuban patriot Jose Marti and Cuba's first president, Tomas Estrada Palma.

"I haven't wasted my time," he said.

FIU's Bretos said Marquez Sterling presided over the 1940 constitutional convention "with singular brilliance."

The seminars, which will be conducted in Spanish, will be held at FIU's Latin American and Caribbean Center.

Many of Marquez Sterling's writings will be translated into English and published later this year, center director Mark B.
Rosenberg said.

Depending on the response, Marquez Sterling may lead another series of seminars next semester, Rosenberg said.

"If he had done nothing more than preside over the convention, he would have a place in Cuban history," Bretos said.