Author: LOURDES FERNANDEZ Herald Staff Writer

Cuban historian and statesman Carlos Marquez Sterling, whose leadership brought about Cuba's most progressive constitution, died of heart failure Friday afternoon at his Miami home. He was 92.

In 1940, Marquez Sterling led 76 delegates in drafting a new constitution, considered the most sweeping of its time.

"To Cubans, on the island or in exile, we can all mourn someone who was one of the greatest Cuban figures and Cuban leaders of the 20th Century," said Mitch Maidique, president of Florida International University, where Marquez Sterling taught as a visiting professor.

Marquez Sterling had lived in Miami for the past 12 years, teaching and writing books. His mind was said to be sharp as ever, even days before his death, as he held long after-dinner discussions on Cuba, politics, movies and other topics.

His last book, published in 1988, was an account of the life of his father, Manuel Marquez Sterling, journalist, diplomat and author. Carlos Marquez Sterling wrote 20 books, including biographies of Cuban patriot Jose Marti and histories on Cuba and the United States.

But perhaps his greatest accomplishment was the 1940 constitutional convention, which lasted six months and resulted in a document with 19 chapters, 32 sections and 286 subsections -- a giant compared to the U.S. Constitution.

The 1940 constitution recognized all Cubans as equal, called for the breakup of large land holdings, granted citizens the right to work, established alimony and child support, and gave legal rights to illegitimate children and unmarried couples who lived together.

"It was our success that corrected many of Cuba's social problems," Marquez Sterling once said.

The previous constitution had been written in 1901 under the approval of the U.S. government.

Before the 1940 convention, and certainly afterward, Marquez Sterling was well known throughout the island. Before he was tapped to head the convention, Marquez Sterling was a lawyer and a professor of economics and law at the University of Havana.

He returned to his law practice and to teaching after the convention. He also founded the Manuel Marquez Sterling Professional School of Journalism and served as speaker of the House of Representatives, as minister of state and as minister of education.

In November 1958, he unsuccessfully ran for president against Andres Rivero Aguero -- a candidate backed by dictator Fulgencio Batista -- and former president Ramon Grau San Martin. The constitution that Marquez Sterling had helped to forge was being disregarded by Batista's government, spurring Marquez Sterling to run. The next year, after the new Castro government placed him under house arrest, Marquez Sterling fled Cuba.

He went to New York, where he taught at Columbia University and C.W. Post College on Long Island. He retired to Miami in 1979. Here, he taught at Biscayne College, now St. Thomas University, and wrote columns for the Spanish-language newspaper Diario Las Americas.

In 1984, the Florida House of Representatives honored Marquez Sterling for his contribution to "Cuba, democracy, justice and liberty."

"He was truly a man of letters, a man who read a lot, who was always current," said his stepdaughter, Uva Clavijo, executive assistant to the president at FIU.

Marquez Sterling, she said, was "a brilliant, simple man, unpretentious, tender, a gentleman. He was modern in his thinking and old-fashioned in his principles."

He showed no signs of slowing down in his last days.

In the past six months, he took part in an oral history project at FIU. He sat and spoke about Cuba for six hours. If the current government should fall, he said, he would like to return to help rebuild the country.

"He loved Cuba very much and he taught me to love Cuba," Clavijo said. "He had faith in Cubans and the future of Cuba. He never lost that faith."

In addition to Clavijo, Marquez Sterling is survived by his wife, Uva; sons, Carlos and Manuel; daughters, Lucia A. Perez and Gloria Andujar; 13 grandchildren and four great- grandchildren.

Visitation is from 1 to 11 p.m. Sunday at Caballero Douglas Road Funeral Home. A funeral Mass will be at 11 a.m. Monday at St. Raymond Catholic Church.