From October 14 to 26, 1923, the first Student Congress was held in Havana. Among the agreements of the student meeting, it was approved to create the José Martí Popular University inspired by the words of Julio Antonio Mella, with the purpose of opening a path of light for the generation of Cuban workers. Did you know that this University was located in San Antonio de los Baños?
The José Martí Popular University was inaugurated on November 3, 1923 in the Aula Magna of the University of Havana. This allowed to unite workers and intellectuals with the Trade Unions, as proof of the transformation that the new educational organism had to take to bring knowledge to the most humble. It was directed by a Board or Board with Julio Antonio Mella as leader. The project was aimed at raising the cultural and ideological political level of the proletariat and to awaken its class consciousness on the basis of the defense of the principles of social justice, aimed at achieving the union of workers with students and intellectuals.
The José Martí Popular University was condemned and persecuted, especially after the government of Gerardo Machado. For this reason, the headquarters changed constantly, from the University to different union offices, among them the Circle of Workers of San Antonio de los Baños.
Julio Antonio Mella visited our Villa on several occasions. Hence his decision that the headquarters of the José Martí Popular University would work here. The conferences took place in the Circle of Workers, where the workers received classes in Social Medicine, History, Chemistry, Politics, Religion and Marxism Leninism taught by Mella; and Anti-imperialism, by Rubén Martínez Villena.
The Popular University was not only a school for workers, it was, simultaneously, a training center for revolutionaries, including their teachers. The coexistence with the workers identified the professors with the interests of the students, strengthening their revolutionary aptitudes.
