Career
He served as Mayor of Ponce, Puerto Rico from 1873 to 1874. They were located in the region between Ponce and Santa Isabel. The workers in such estates were almost always slaves.
Thus it is likely that Cortada owned slaves in working his sugarcane farm.
Some sources confirm that Cortada in fact owned 28 slaves in 1872, one year before the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico. Since 1868, Cortada"s estate had irrigation problems, which led Cortada to ask for permits to use the waters of Río Descalabrado river to irrigate his land.
However, this change wasn"t registered. Cortada also had debts for the mortgage of the land where Hacienda Palmarito was established.
In 1874, he had to sell Hacienda Descalabrado, but he recovered it in 1884.
By 1870 Cortada owned five haciendas in the municipality of Ponce. Cortada served as Mayor of Ponce from 1873 to 1874. This was the time when the Republica Española (Spanish Republic) was declared (February 11, 1873) and also the time when slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico (March 22, 1873).
Cortada"s municipal assembly consisted of: Rafael Pujals, Federico Capo, Jose Antonio Renta, Celedonio Besosa, Olimpio Otero, Lazaro Martinez, Marcos Fugurull (padre/father), Juan Jose Mayoral, Guillermo Oppenheimer, and Gustavo Cabrera.
There is a street in a Ponce neighborhood, Urbanización Las Delicias, of Barrio Magueyes named after him.