Guillermo Pérez Dressler is a Cuban architect born in Guanabacoa, Havana, in 1860. From a young age, his parents, Juan Pérez Zúñiga and Purificación Dressler de la Portilla, recognized his talents and encouraged him to develop them.
To further his career, the family moved to the center of Havana. However, after his father's death, Guillermo, then 15, had to abandon his studies and work in a pharmacy.
A professor, convinced of the young man's potential, found him a scholarship to study architecture at the Sorbonne in Paris, thanks to a bourgeois family from Vedado. At 16, Guillermo arrived in Paris and adopted the name Guillaume Dressler. At 21, he graduated with distinction.
After his studies, he joined an architectural firm where he quickly distinguished himself, participating in the reconstruction of bridges, roads and civil and religious buildings. His life took a turn when his former professor at the Sorbonne put him in touch with Gustave Eiffel, who was looking for an assistant for his famous tower project.
Guillaume quickly became Eiffel's right-hand man, who entrusted him with the direction of several projects, including a significant portion of the tower, although he was never publicly credited. Eiffel, prone to vertigo, only went up to the first floor, leaving Dressler to fully supervise the construction of the tower until its inauguration on March 31, 1889.
In July 1889, Dressler was summoned by Queen Victoria to design the Victoria and Albert Museum and Gardens in London. He left on 4 August, but his ship was wrecked in a storm, with only four passengers surviving. Guillermo perished in the Straits of Dover, his body never recovered. His name has faded over time, and Gustave Eiffel remains the only one recognized as the architect of the tower that bears his name, although much of his fame goes to a Cuban.
Guillaume Dressler is not the only Cuban with an incredible story. Other, lesser-known Cubans have played key roles at pivotal moments in world history.
It is said that a Cuban woman breastfed Simón Bolívar, that another compatriot became the son-in-law of Karl Marx, and that José Palma, originally from Bayamo, wrote the Guatemalan national anthem.
Furthermore, Manuel del Socorro Rodríguez, founder of the first newspaper in Bogotá, was Cuban, as was the famous pirate Diego Grillo, born in Havana. This mulatto corsair, son of a Spanish father and an African mother, is said to have even risen to the rank of British admiral under the shadow of Francis Drake. Other sources report that he may have perished at the hands of the Spanish in the Caribbean, or lived in England until an advanced age, enjoying his fortune.
The historical accuracy of some of these stories may be open to debate, but that does not prevent Cubans from rejoicing in this international presence.
While many commodities are scarce in Cuba, self-esteem is not one of them.
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