# Agustín Díaz Cartaya

**Date of birth:** September 25, 1929

**Categories:** Society, revolutionary

Revolutionary and composer of the Hymn of July 26th. He also composed six other marches, among them the one for Latin America, in 1963. The others dedicated to the Tricontinental, in 1966, to the Youth Column of the Centenary, in 1968, to the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, in 1980, to the Revolutionary Armed Forces, in 2006, and to the Unity of the Peoples, in 2007.

He was born in Marianao, La Habana, in what is now the municipality of La Lisa. He could not be raised within his family but in the House of Maternity and Charity. He does not have the surname Valdés because they did not take him to the "wheel" when his mother, Petrona Cartaya Abreu, very poor, began to work in the house of doctor Julio César Portela, then director of that institution, was born. He met her through some bars when he was three years old. And he stayed there until he was eleven years old.

The only thing known about his father, because he never saw him, is that his name was Alejandro Noriega. He does not remember his second surname. He left the Charity because his mother went to work in the house of doctor Enrique Llansó Ordoñez, the one from the Llansó Asylum. And he was able to go to that asylum, where he worked for three years. There he learned to work hard, doing everything honorably imaginable; he helped in carpentry, in blacksmithing, cleaned wards and prepared the bodies of elderly people who died to put them in coffins.

After leaving the Llansó Asylum, he played baseball and achieved some fame. They called him "El Negro Thompson" because of the great resemblance he had to the third baseman of the Habana Club, known as "La Ametralladora Thompson," Harry Thompson. Cartaya worked collecting all the waste in the street to sell it and slept in the street. He spent a year and a half selling tamales, selling peanuts and shining shoes, with nowhere to sleep. He sang in the streets, a cappella, although sometimes someone accompanied him, but the money he earned singing, reciting and playing ball was not enough for him to survive.

He worked in the La Victoria Warehouses in Plaza de Marianao, as a messenger, earning five pesos a week. He was in those warehouses for two years and then went to run errands for a family that lived on Calzada Real de Marianao, who took him in when they saw him sleeping in the doorway in a warehouse across from their home.

Later he became involved with young revolutionaries, like Hugo Camejo Valdés and joined young people from the Instituto de Marianao. He participated in the actions of July 26th, 1953, as a member of the Centenary Generation. He was arrested and sentenced to prison along with a group of his companions.

On October 12th, the Minister of the Interior, Ramón Heredia, ordered that the group of revolutionaries condemned for the events of the Moncada, within which Agustín Díaz Cartaya was found, be transferred to the National Penitentiary of the Isle of Pines. According to the Court's orders they should remain in special facilities, separated from common prisoners[1]. In DC-3 aircraft from the army, under heavy military guard they were transferred from the province of Oriente to the Isle of Pines.

He was placed, along with the rest of his companions, in one of the rooms of the prison hospital, separated from common prisoners by a brick wall that was built for that purpose[2]. Shortly after he was allowed to receive one visit a month and some correspondence, which was always severely reviewed and censored.

Like the rest of his companions, he refused to accept the special dinner on December 24th, 1953 in protest against the murders committed by the army and the rural guard during the events of the Moncada[2].

On February 12th, 1954, when dictator Fulgencio Batista visited the Penal to inaugurate the power plant of the prison, Agustín Díaz Cartaya, together with his 25 companions[3] sang out loud the March of July 26th. Batista paid attention to the lyrics and visibly displeased only asked who was singing, then quickly abandoned the penitentiary. For this action he was severely punished along with Fidel Castro, Israel Tápanes, Ramiro Valdés, and Ernesto Tizol.

He was sent to Pavilion Two (the one for the mentally ill) to a punishment cell: a cubic niche 2 meters long by 1.5 meters wide, where one could only remain standing while stooped over. The door only had an opening to pass food through, but no light. The physiological needs of the prisoners were relieved in a hole in the floor. Because Cartaya was the author of the music of the March of July 26th, the Penal authorities were particularly cruel to him. He was savagely beaten by guards and common prisoners in the early morning of February 15th until he lost consciousness[2]. He remained punished there for fifteen days.

From 1954 and with greater force from 1955 onwards, a broad national movement began, which encompassed almost all political tendencies and classes in the country, in favor of a general amnesty that would include the Moncada attackers. On March 10th, 1955, in the midst of official celebrations for the third anniversary of the coup d'état, separate general amnesty bills were presented in both chambers of the Cuban Congress. On May 6th, after being approved by both chambers of the Cuban Congress, Fulgencio Batista signed the Amnesty Law that freed all political prisoners, including the attackers of the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks who were serving their sentences in the Isle of Pines penitentiary.