To refer the patriot Carlos Baliño are many phrases that describe the valuable life of this thinker and man of action in favor of the independence of Cuba.
José Martí used to call "the Cuban gold". The patriot Ángel Peláez, in a dated letter in January 1892, recommended the Apostle: "Love Baliño, which has a healthy mind and heart". Months later, in the newspaper Patria, characterized him as "a Cuban who suffers with beautiful soul by the sorrows of humanity and could only sin by impatience to redeem them.
For the labor press of the early twentieth century was the "indomitable rebel [...], a righteous man, a rebel who lived only thinking and feeling for the release of its kind, to which he always had a fertile brain, a soul poet and an unselfish heart".
Carlos Baliño López was born in Guanajay on February 13th, 1848. His father, architect and engineer, he was deported to Africa for his conspiratorial activities against Spanish colonialism. His mother, Dolores, was a convinced independence. Thanks to the tenacity with which compiled the early writings of his son, today we have that part of his work.
Very young he began collaborating with newspapers in his native town: The Scorpion, The Phoenix and The Critic. These writings attracted him unpopular with the authorities. In 1869 he was forced to emigrate, from Matanzas to New Orleans. On foreign soil was thwarted forever his dream of becoming an architect and had to work drawer. In Tampa learned the trade of tobacco and specialized as a chooser.
His defiance earned him persecution employer. He left Tampa and along with who would be the companion of his life and mother of his children, Dolores del Corral, toured most of the southern United States.
In the first struggle for independence, devoted his best efforts, without neglecting either the classic studies of scientific socialism. Organized clubs among revolutionaries Cuban who longed for a Cuba free and sovereign. With Marti and other patriots formed the Cuban Revolutionary Party in 1892 and participated in the election of the Apostle as leader of that organization.
Following the establishment of the neocolonial republic, warned his countrymen Baliño on what he considered a greater danger: the expansion of the American capital in the country. He warned about national sovereignty weighed down dependence on the United States.
When organized in Havana the first communist group (on March 18th, 1923), Baliño was among the founders and a member of first executive committee. Then in 1925, participated in the first constituent congress of the Communist Party of Cuba.
Despite his septuagenarian condition was almost seen him challenge the police in demonstrations and meetings with twenty´s as Julio Antonio Mella. He had the hair, beard and mustache white rich and the workers began calling him "the old oak". Only a mortal illness removed him from the fight. Until his sickbed was taken the imprisonment order by an infamous judge and cruel. The veteran patriot died on June 18th, 1926.
On the occasion of his death he published the Bulletin of cigar in the edition July 1926: "A least rebel an oak that collapses for years, but there is a symbol, a model of devotion, an example of activity and loyalty [... ] if ever the weakness take us back, let´s remember Carlos Baliño".
