Raul Garcia

Raul Garcia Alvarez (21 August 1884-3 April 1962) was a Cerveran revolutionary and politician who was the founding father of the Cerveran People's Directorate and its National Directivist Party. Ideologically a, his applications of Duvalist thought to political, economic, military and social affairs are collectively known as Directivism.

Early Life and Education
Raul Garcia Alvarez was born to Jorge Garcia Salas and Rosa Alvarez Guardiola on 21 August 1884, the youngest of three brothers. Jorge, the son of a farmer, had sold the family farm and used the proceeds to move to the city of Bayamo in 1873, where he opened a print shop and publishing house and established a comfortably middle class lifestyle for his family. The liberal, bordering on radical, political climate of Bayamo and frequent exposure to various political tracts and pamphlets the family business took on as commissions had an early and lasting impact on Raul, as did frequent inspections and harassments by the authorities. In line with Jorge's humanist values, all three Garcia brothers were educated in secular schools as opposed to the more common parochial institutions run by the Marian Church. Raul in particular excelled in his studies, being described as bookish and philosophical in imitation of his father, to whom he was especially close.

In 1901, Garcia graduated from Public High School No. 17 with a humanities diploma and traveled to Matanzas, where he intended to sit the entrance exam for law school; for unknown reasons, but likely related to his father's political activities, he was rejected prior to examination.

Matanzas Years
Dejected, Garcia wrote to his father to ask for advice in the summer of 1901. Writing in response, Jorge advised his son to continue efforts to obtain college admission, if not as a lawyer than in another field of letters. A further two unsuccessful attempts at law school, and one at a teacher's college, followed in Garcia's three years in Matanzas, during which time he worked a series of odd jobs to support himself and supplanted his meagre income with petty crime, gambling and bookmaking. During this period he lived in a boardinghouse with other young unmarried men and developed a friendship with his fellow boarders, whom he described in later recollections as "not hardened criminals by any means, but certainly no angels either." This exposure to the working class life of Matanzas, he would write later, began his political awakening, demonstrating the harsh realities of the urban poor and the extent to which vice and criminal activity became activities of necessity and survival among them. In spite of this, there is no evidence that Garcia ever joined a political organization while in Matanzas, as communism was still in its infancy in Cervera at that time.

In 1904 Garcia abruptly returned to Bayamo, reportedly to avoid gambling debts, and began work in his father's print shop; Jorge's death in September 1909 saw the shop pass to the 25 year old Raul.