Carlos Baliño and Julio Antonio Mella, founders of the First Communist Party.. Photo: Internet
On Sunday, August 16, 1925, some men arrived at the house, located on Calle Calzada, No. 81, Vedado, with the mission of creating the First Communist Party of Cuba.
The founders
Carlos Baliño was one of the founders of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, along with José Martí. During the first decades of the Neocolonial Republic was dedicated to spread the Marxist ideas in the Island. The young Julio Antonio Mella, who was secretary of the Federation of University Students (FEU), founded in 1922, developed an intense revolutionary work to unite the efforts of workers and students in the fight against the situation of the country.
Participants
The guests to the Party Foundation Congress belonged to different communist groups in Havana. Alejandro Barreiro, syndicalist leader of Los Cigarreros; Yoshka Grinberg and Yunger Semiovich (Communist Group of the Hebrew Section and Communist Youth) and Felix Gurbich. Venancio Rodríguez (Group of Guanabacoa); Miguel Valdés (Union of Tobacco Workers), and Emilio Rodríguez (San Antonio de los Baños). Enrique Flores Magón (Mexican Communist Party) Mella y Barreiro (Group of Manzanillo), the canary professor José Miguel Pérez and the trade union leader Jose Peña Vilaboa. Barreiro was chosen to preside over the first session, while Flores Magón was appointed as secretary of reports and Mella for the Press and Publicity.
Congress Development
One of the central points of this congress was the education of the future militants of the Party, and the creation of a commission made up of José Miguel Pérez, Mella and Alfonso Bernal del Riesgo to write this educational program. Among other agreements, they included organizing peasants and defending the rights of women and youth, with an emphasis on combating the growing employment of children in the country's labor centers.
The most important agreement was to establish the Communist Party of Cuba. The first secretary general of the organization was José Miguel Pérez. A year after his work began, he is detained and deported to Spain, where he was shot in 1939 by the fascist government in power.