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Concept
Severiano de Heredia
Summary
Severiano de Heredia (8 November 1836 – 9 February 1901) was a Cuban-born biracial politician, a freemason, a left-wing republican, naturalized as French in 1870, who was president of the municipal council of Paris from 1 August 1879 to 12 February 1880, making him the only native of the American continent who was appointed on relevant post of the Mayor of Paris and the first mayor of African descent of a Western world capital.
In 1880, he succeeded Victor Hugo in the presidency of the Philotechnical Association. He served in the Chamber of Deputies from 1881 to 1889 and was briefly Minister of Public Works for the cabinet of Maurice Rouvier in 1887, at the time when the Eiffel Tower first started being built, where he planned and oversaw the construction of some of the finest French highways. He is believed to be a cousin of the famous French poet José-Maria de Heredia.
Severiano de Heredia was born in Matanzas, Cuba, to Henri de Heredia and mulatta Beatrice Cardenas. Reportedly he was the natural son of his godfather Don Ignacio Heredia y Campuzano-Polanco married to the French Madeleine Godefroy, who adopted him and sent him to France at the age of 10 for his education, attending the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He applied for French citizenship which was granted under the Ministerial Decree of 28 September 1870.
He married at Paris, 3 November 1868, Henriette Hanaire, by whom he had a son in 1869, Henri-Ignace, and a daughter, Marcelle, in 1873. His son died in an accident at Wimereux at the age of twelve and was buried at Cimetière des Batignolles on 4 September 1882. His daughter studied at the Paris Medical School, became a notable neurophysiologist and formed a team with her husband, the neurophysiologist Louis Lapicque.
Upon the death of his godfather in 1848, Severiano de Heredia inherited his wealth and embarked on a career as a poet and literary critic. In 1871, while he was assuming the role of a conciliator, he published a political essay entitled "Paix et plébiscite" in which he pleaded for a democratic end to the Franco-Prussian war.
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