Ismael Negrin paved the way for Hispanic churches

KEY WEST (FBC)–With his feet planted solidly in both the United States and Cuba, Ismael Negrin, a missionary appointed to Cuba by the Home Mission Board (HMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention, was one of the Cuban pastors in the mid-1950’s who helped pave the way for the growth of Florida’s Hispanic congregations.

While serving in Cruces, Cuba, from 1931 to 1947, Negrin won hundreds of new converts—persons who, after the Cuban Revolution, would find new lives in America.

Negrin was a “visionary” and “showman” said David Lema, director of the New Orleans Seminary Ethnic Branch in Miami. “He was a ‘pack the pew’ kind of guy,” sponsoring big evangelistic events, community festivals, parades, and starting Baptist schools. “He would get ideas from the United States and transfer them to Cuba. That was ‘nouvelle’ at that time.”

“Negrin was very evangelistic,” said renowned Cuban pastor Aurelio Travieso. “He was good at communicating with the people of the city and church.”

During a three-year evangelistic movement spurred by Negrin, Antonio Ramos and others traveled to camps and other towns near Cruces, going house-to-house to share the Gospel. The movement resulted in 1,727 conversions, said Ramos, who now serves as associate pastor of the Renacer Spanish Iglesia of Pembroke Pines.

Thirty of the men involved in the evangelistic effort became pastors. Many of them, including Ramos and home missionary Anibal Espinosa, served later in Florida.

A carpenter’s son, Negrin was born in Las Palma, Canary Islands, Spain, on April 22, 1899, and at age five settled in Guayos, Cuba. After making a profession of faith in 1919, Negrin said he “at once felt the desire to preach the Gospel.” After attending the Cuban-American College, he attended seminary in Cuba, graduating in the last class before the seminary was closed in 1929.

Negrin was appointed as a HMB missionary Sept. 15, 1924, to work in Havana. In 1926, he married fellow HMB missionary Bessie Harrill, (born March 23, 1900) a native of Lincolntown, N.C., who was sent to Havana as a teacher in 1920.

From 1927 to 1929, the couple was assigned to start a goodwill ministry center in Ybor City, a Tampa suburb where Cubans worked in the cigar industry. The couple returned to Cuba in 1931 where they were appointed to Cruces.

In 1947, the Negrins were brought back to the States and appointed by the HMB to help missionary Mary A. Taylor at the goodwill center in Key West, the first Hispanic work in South Florida.

They served there for 14 years, conducting services in Spanish and English.

In 1948, the HMB constructed a building on Watson Street in Key West to accommodate the Hispanic congregation. The church met there until 1953 when the congregation moved to a new building on White Street. In 2005, the White Street Church was still in existence and had been deeded to the Florida Baptist Convention.

In 1959, the exodus of Cuban refugees took the family to Miami where they helped pastors and their families relocate in Florida. Negrin became director of the Spanish department at Stanton Memorial Baptist Church.

 His daughter, Anne Negrin Garcia, estimates that her father helped as many as 200 Cuban refugees, obtaining visas and resettling them in their new land.

Negrin’s bilingual ability served as a “bridge” for the Cuban Baptists, Lema said, providing the transition that the Cubans and especially the pastors needed in their new country. “He was fluent and comfortable in both worlds,” Lema said, and spoke perfect English without an accent. His Anglo wife gave him an entree into American society few other Cubans could enjoy. “He knew how everything worked in the U.S. When pastors came over he readily helped them,” Lema recalled.

This group of pastors served as a network that jump-started Baptist work among Hispanics in Miami. “They were the standard bearers,” said Lema. “They served as pastors of the largest churches in Cuba,” immigrating because of political pressure that led to the imprisonment of fellow pastors in Cuba.

In their last years of life, the Negrins returned to Key West where Bessie died Feb. 11, 1977, after a fall while preparing boxes for the elderly in the county home. Negrin moved back to Miami, remarried and died July 25, 1983. He and Bessie are both buried in Key West.

Calling Negrin “an unsung hero in the pages of our Florida Baptist history,” Lema said, “He made a difference behind the scenes.”