Abel Santamaría Cuadrado

Abel was born in Encrucijada, in the current province of Villaclara, and was a political activist of the Cuban Revolution.

As a very young child he moved with his family to Central Constancia, where his father worked as head of the carpentry workshop. There he spent his childhood with his sisters Haydée, Aida and Ada, and his brother Aldo, and completed his primary education.

Barely finishing primary school, he began working at the sugar mill: he was a cleaning boy, merchandise dispatcher, and finally a clerk. From then on he came into contact with sugar workers, whom Jesús Menéndez had led years before.

A few years before 1953 and at 19 years of age, Abel decided to travel to La Habana in search of greater opportunities for work and study. He managed to carry out his high school studies alongside his work activities. When his financial situation allowed him to rent an apartment, Santamaría sent for his sister Haydée, who shared his interests and political thinking most closely. After several months of preparation, he passed the entrance exam to the Professional School of Commerce and later to Instituto No.1 de Segunda Enseñanza de la Habana.

Abel began working at the Ariguanabo textile mill in the municipality of Bauta, but did not stop attending night classes. He joined the Partido del Pueblo Cubano (Ortodoxo) to channel his growing political and social concerns, carrying out support campaigns through the youth in favor of his leader Eduardo R. Chibás.

Later Abel held the position of accountant-treasurer at the Pontiac automobile agency. He rented the small apartment 603 on calle 25 number 164 corner O, in Vedado. From this point on he brought his sister Haydée to live with him, who along with Melba Hernández would be the first women to take part in the actions of the assault on Cuartel Moncada on July 26, 1953.

There also met Elda Pérez, Jesús Montané, Raúl Gómez García and other combatants, to fight against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who had assumed power with the military coup of March 10, 1952.

May 1, 1952 could have been just another day for Abel, but it was not. That day he met someone who, like him, believed that "A Revolution is not made in a day but is begun in a second." On International Workers' Day, Abel met Fidel Castro at the Pilgrimage that took place at the tomb of Carlos Rodríguez, killed the previous year by the police. Fidel in turn met the one who would be the most generous, beloved and intrepid of the young men who would assault Cuartel Moncada with him 15 months later. That handshake sealed in one the historical destiny of those men and would become an accelerating factor in the triumph of the Revolution.

His political concerns led him to join Juventud Ortodoxa and when Fulgencio Batista's military coup occurred on March 10, 1952, he was among the first to express his combative repudiation of the events.

Abel and the small group of companions who contacted him in apartment 603 printed the clandestine newspaper "Son los Mismos," whose director was Raúl Gómez García. Fidel suggested a more combative name and thus "El Acusador" emerged on June 1, 1952. Of its three issues, the last was distributed on August 16 of the same year at the pilgrimage to Cementerio Colón on the occasion of the first anniversary of Chibás' death. That day Abel was detained and taken to Castillo del Príncipe. For this he was tried by the Court of Urgency.

Later, Abel and Fidel would move to the province of Matanzas to contact Dr. Mario Muñoz, who besides being a doctor was a radio enthusiast. Muñoz would deliver them 2 small plants, which were taken to La Habana in order to punish the tyranny. All the young men who edited the clandestine newspaper were incorporated into the revolutionary movement.

At the May 1, 1952 ceremony in honor of the murdered worker Carlos Rodríguez, Abel met Fidel Castro. Years later, Fidel would be the leader of Movimiento 26 de Julio, created in 1955 after the assault on Cuartel Moncada on July 26, 1953. Santamaría believed that the overthrow of the Batista government would be only the starting point of the social transformations that the Cuban people needed.

His apartment became a meeting center for the young men that Fidel recruited. Many of them had participated in protest actions and in political activities of Juventud Ortodoxa, in popular neighborhoods of La Habana and its surroundings. Santamaría became the unifier of those young men, whose number exceeded 1200. Although all received some kind of weapons training, many of them could not participate in the assault scheduled for July 26.

When everything was ready, already in Santiago de Cuba, Abel asked for the most dangerous position to preserve Fidel's life. For his part, Fidel stated that it would be he, and no other companion, who would occupy the most dangerous post, that is the assault by post 3 of Moncada, and told Abel that he would send him to the rear guard (to take the Civil Hospital Building), where, according to the plans, there would be no fighting, only to occupy it so that the Army would not do so under any circumstance.

He was alongside Fidel the organizer of the Assault on Cuartel Moncada. Due to his organizational capacity he went to Santiago de Cuba to finalize the plans for the Moncada action. On the night of July 25, Fidel and Abel spoke to those gathered to explain their missions in combat, and Abel would express:

"It is necessary that we all go with faith in triumph; but if destiny is adverse we are obliged to be brave in defeat, because what happened there will be known one day and our willingness to die for the Homeland will be imitated by all the youth of Cuba. Our example deserves sacrifice and mitigates the pain we may cause to our parents and other loved ones. To die for the Homeland is to live!"

The plan was to storm Cuartel Moncada dressed in government uniforms. However, the plan was discovered based on a badge that the regiment in the barracks added to the uniforms, precisely because of the carnivals being celebrated in Santiago de Cuba those days. This fact thwarted the surprise assault, initiating combat in the barracks.

Santamaría was aware that the plans had not gone entirely well and proceeded to direct the charge at Cuartel Moncada from another flank, giving time for Fidel Castro and his companions to withdraw and head to the mountains of Sierra Maestra, near Santiago de Cuba. Even after the fighting at Moncada had ceased and everything indicated that the action had failed, Santamaría gave orders to his men to continue fighting from their positions.

From Fidel, Abel assumed the tactics and strategy of struggle in such a way that he was assuming greater responsibilities each day within the project that, now with his collaboration as second in command, Fidel was developing; with José Martí as the center and model of the best and purest currents of our revolutionary, anti-imperialist, internationalist and national liberating heritage.

The ideological purposes of this project likewise assimilated the conceptions of Marxism-Leninism and its methodology for social change. In proselytizing activities, men organized themselves in secret cells and gained awareness regarding the reasons and objectives of struggle, military training, searches for weapons and a minimum of resources, and finally, planning based on the realistic foundations of a first action capable of triggering popular armed insurrection, as an essential condition for the development of the Revolution.

Abel suffered harassment from repressive forces and imprisonment, renounced his job position, abandoned the attractions of a smiling youth life and sacrificed personal and family interests because of his great sensitivity to social injustices. Due to his great self-denial, firmness and courage, he imposed upon himself the formidable task of making the Revolution even at the price of his own life.

It fell to Abel to take the Civil Hospital "Saturnino Lora," and when the armed action failed, along with several young men he was taken prisoner, but he sealed his lips and serenely faced torture and death. First they beat him, then in an act of unparalleled barbarity they gouged out an eye, burned his arms; but he did not say a word or utter a complaint. That is how brave, firm and pure he was. He died in the dungeons of Regimiento No.1 without his fighting spirit wavering.

After the failed assault, Santamaría was taken prisoner by government forces. Military torturers wanted to extract from his lips the name of the Head of the Movement and his plans, but Abel kept silent like the others, and that same morning after gouging out an eye and torturing him horribly, they murdered him. Minutes later the torturers approached Haydée and Melba to try to get them to reveal those who had assaulted post 3, but they did not succeed. When they told Haydée that they had killed her brother and also her fiancé—Boris Luis Santa Coloma—that they had gouged out the eyes of the first and had torn out the testicles of the second, she said that if Abel, who knew everything, did not speak, neither would she. Her brother Abel and other companions had left the hospital alive: these were the first murders of prisoners, on July 26, 1953. The death of Santamaría was a hard blow to the revolutionary movement that was beginning in Cuba.