Antonio Briones Montoto

During the insurrectional stage, while still a student, Antonio Briones Montoto actively participated in Action and Sabotage of the Movement 26 of July. Trained in Mexico in guerrilla warfare and in preparations to return to Cuba, he was surprised by the triumph of the Revolution in the United States. He returns to his homeland and takes on responsibilities in the Ministries of Treasury and Agriculture, as well as in the ICAIC. On May first, 1967, he departed to carry out an internationalist mission in Venezuela. His mission was to ensure the landing of revolutionaries and return. Having completed the first part of the plan, he is surprised and falls in an altruistic, revolutionary, internationalist, and heroic gesture.

He was born in Havana in the bosom of a family with deep-rooted revolutionary heritage.

Artemio, his paternal grandfather, Spanish in origin, always maintained socialist and anti-imperialist ideas, in favor of workers' struggles. Newton, his father, was a prominent fighter of the Generation of the 30s who became a member of the Central Committee of Joven Cuba, the organization founded and directed by Antonio Guiteras Holmes; his mother too, Dulce María, was an active fighter and both felt such admiration and were so identified with the martyr of Morrillo that they gave their son his name.

When the coup d'état led by Fulgencio Batista occurred (already with a long history of theft and murders, including that of Guiteras), Tony's parents immediately joined the struggle against the dictatorship, and he, still very young, began his revolutionary activity, as one of many young people who stood out in the clandestine struggle to achieve full freedom.

When he entered the Institute of Secondary Education in Havana, he participated, along with his younger brother, in demonstrations led by students against the Batista dictatorship. There he studied the History of Cuba, the Constitution, and a copy of History Will Absolve Me also came into his hands, Fidel's defense speech at the trial for the Moncada events. According to his own words: "...from that time on I began to understand the meaning of the struggle and I became a conscious revolutionary."

On more than one occasion, he fell into the hands of the henchmen of tyranny directed by Orlando Piedra, Head of the Bureau of Investigations, receiving beatings and torture along with other comrades, some of whom were murdered. Because of constant persecution, he had to go into exile. He arrived in New York in the early months of 1957. There he joined the Movement 26 of July to continue his activity in favor of the Revolution.

Due to his insistence on returning to Cuba to fight, he traveled to Mexico, where he prepared militarily in the camps of Ixtapán de la Sal, Aguas Calientes, Llanos del Medio, and in the jungles of Quintana Roo. There he received news of the death of his fiancée, Urselia Díaz Baez, in Havana, while fulfilling a mission in the clandestine struggle. Although he was designated to travel to Cuba and join the Che's troops, who was already in the Sierra del Escambray, in the central region of the country, he could not achieve his objective because conditions were not favorable for departure from Mexico. While waiting, he is surprised by January 1, 1959.

Upon the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution, he returns immediately to the Homeland and joins in the construction of the new society. He joined the National Revolutionary Militias, worked in the Ministry of Treasury and later, as a leader in the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), a position he resigned from in early 1962 to enter as a simple soldier in the Ministry of Interior (MININT). This attitude could not surprise anyone who knew his political thinking and revolutionary spirit.

He continued his high school studies and began university. In a short time, he is promoted to officer thanks to his preparation, experience, and proven revolutionary attitude. Within MININT, he moves to the Personal Security Directorate and later to Special Forces, a unit he was more suited for due to his willingness for sacrifice and his particular perspective on the revolutionary struggle.

He did not hesitate either to fulfill the sacred internationalist duty. Like Che and other Cuban fighters, he resigns from his positions, from a more tranquil life, and with pain but with firmness, leaving the warmth of family to help other peoples of the world obtain their freedom. In a farewell letter to his brother he expresses:

"and I leave with extraordinary faith, I know that the life of a guerrilla is hard, full of sacrifices, but you know that I am willing to fight for as long as necessary and if necessary I will not return to Cuba again, until the last country is liberated."

To his children, Tony and Orquídea, he wrote:
"You will grow up, it is likely that I may be absent from you, but the main thing remains: a Revolution. You must be faithful to it as your father was. You will have the glory of growing up in socialism and of helping to build communism, which should be the maximum aspiration of Humanity!"

He participates, in May 1967, in a landing mission on the beach of Machurucuto, just a few kilometers from Cúpira, east of Miranda state, in Venezuela, of nine guerrillas of that nation, to advance into the mountains and carry out armed struggle. After the expeditionaries landed, the barge in which Briones Montoto was heading back out to sea to return to Cuba capsized. He and two other comrades managed to swim to the beach and hide in small coastal towns. They were betrayed and captured.

According to the testimony of William Izarra, then a second lieutenant with very little time since graduation and 19 years old, who was performing his first task as a military helicopter pilot and participated in interrogations by order of the command, the Cuban fighter and although he was reticent, expounded profound existential and ideological concepts. He told me why he was contributing to Venezuelan armed struggle. International solidarity was part of the emancipation of peoples. He said, rationally, that the United States were enemies of Latin Americans and that his political action was aimed at dominating them to extract their resources, impose their culture, their values, their consumption habits, and maintain a captive market to commercialize their products. He supported, out of conviction, the cause of Venezuelans who had taken up arms to dignify their liberators. That is why he, spontaneously, sustained by his beliefs in international solidarity, offered himself as a volunteer to fulfill this revolutionary mission and was willing to die for his principles. What he communicated to me left me with a doubt about my preconceived assessment before questioning him. He also affirms that this encounter marks the starting point of the gestation, development, and consolidation of my revolutionary consciousness.

The next day, when Izarra returned to Machurucuto, Antonio Briones Montoto was dead. A rifle shot had destroyed his face. The official report said he had tried to escape to the beach of Machurucuto, but the truth was rumored: they had given the order to murder him.

In the armed helicopter, with William Izarra as copilot, they transported him to the military hospital in Caracas. The body was made to disappear. By a historical coincidence, the date of his murder, May 8, is the same as that of the fall, decades earlier, of the Cuban revolutionary fighter, in memory of whom his parents had named him.

On May 18, 1967, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba issued a declaration of solidarity of the Party and Cuban people with the altruistic, revolutionary, internationalist, and heroic gesture of the young Cuban. Today, his heroic action and example remain imperishable and his name is repeated, as a tribute, in the works of the Revolution, among them our community.

On June 27, 2006, 39 years later, a simple monument and a plaque were unveiled at the site where he died. In the solemn ceremony William Izarra, now Vice Minister of Foreign Relations of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, expressed: "and you will live forever, Antonio Briones Montoto."

Letter from Antonio to his children
My dear children:
As you can see, this letter was written many years ago, it is quite possible that I am still fighting and you will already know how to read and write, you will think how is it possible that in so many years you haven't been able to see me and that you have barely received news from me...
I was born and had to develop in an era when the world was divided into two parts, those who try to subjugate it and those who struggle to prevent this from happening; I belonged to the latter; from childhood I hated abuse, domination, etc.

Later I grew up and when I was 13 years old there was a coup d'état by a tyrant who had already on another occasion wrapped Cuba in mourning.

This tyrant was very hated by your grandfathers because they in their youth had confronted him. When that was beginning, I was studying and where the greatest hatred existed was in our student class; I immediately joined whatever little I could do in repudiation of that regime; time passed, emerges for the first time in history a leader of our people, a leader capable of making a Revolution, our Commander Fidel Castro.

I join his thinking and that is when the struggle truly begins. From that moment until now I have remained fighting.

You will grow up, it is possible that I may fail you, but the main thing remains with you: a Revolution; you must be faithful to it as your father was.

You will have the glory of growing up in socialism and of helping to build communism, which should be the maximum aspiration of humanity.

I recommend to you that the first thing you should read is The Golden Age, this was a book written by our Apostle and that should be read by young people who aspire to be revolutionaries; then all his Complete Works, begin to read the writings, speeches of our Commander in Chief, and when you have greater knowledge, the works of Marx-Engels-Lenin. With all this knowledge you can say that theoretically one begins to be revolutionary, but it is not enough, you have to go into practice; you will have to be examples as students, doing pioneer work, later voluntary work, serve in the military, without it being necessary to call you obligatorily, be militiamen in normal times and willing to die for your Homeland as many times as necessary. A verse from our Apostle comes to mind that you should always remember it:

Come then, manly son
come both of us, if I die you kiss me... if you...I prefer to see you dead than to see you vile!
The years have passed, when I left your side you were very small, I left you living modestly, you should try not to get comfortable with life, have sacrifice as your course, not set yourselves goals because this is what will lead you to be conformists and being revolutionary is being as dynamic as possible. I have nothing more to tell you. A father should give his children advice, generally children imitate the father as long as he maintains correct conduct. My leaving you never meant that I did not love you. On the contrary, I went out to fight because among the things I could see when you were growing up was how many children in the world of selfish people were dying of hunger, from disease, etc., and it was necessary to stop such a situation, that was one of the greatest causes that drove me, so that one day the children of other countries, both the little Black children, the Indians, etc., would be happy...

Love and care for your mother as she has been very good. I hope I will have news from you, it would comfort me to know that you are pioneers or young communists. Your father loves you. A. Briones.