Antonio Guiteras Holmes

Outstanding revolutionary leader born in Bala Cynwyd, Philadelphia, United States, who moved to Cuba in 1913.

He was the second son of Cuban Calixto Guiteras Gener and American Marie Theresse Holmes Walsh. His sister Calixta was one year older than him and Margot was four years younger.

From childhood he grew up hearing stories from his uncle, José Ramón Guiteras, who gave his life for Cuba's freedom during the first war of independence and those of his great-uncle, the Irishman John Walsh, who was one of the most important leaders of Ireland's independence. When he was four years old he suffered an accident that caused him to lose control of the right side of his body for several years. For this reason he became left-handed. He also lost the vision in his left eye, which became somewhat deviated.

His father, a cultured man of liberal thinking, knew how to instill in him his love for the Homeland and José Martí. The Holmes family, due to health problems of the father, moved to Cuba in 1913, settling in Matanzas for a year and then in Pinar del Río. There Antonio Guiteras enrolled in the Escuelas Pías and his sisters in the Inmaculado Corazón de María.

On September 15, 1919, he requested admission to the Institute of Secondary Education in Pinar del Río. Under the Varona Plan he studied at that institution Universal Geography, Arithmetic, Grammar, and Languages. On November 27, 1923, he was arrested at the Dulce theater for participating in a student protest motivated by a speech by Gabriel Barceló, special envoy of Julio Antonio Mella. In July 1924 he received the title of Bachelor of Sciences and Letters and the diploma of Surveyor and Land Appraiser.

Newly graduated from the Institute, he presented himself as a candidate at the School of Cadets at El Morro, as he wished to be a soldier, but was rejected due to his visual defect. Then he decided to study Pharmacy at the University of Havana and moved to the capital, living in a boarding house at Reina and Campanario.

On April 7, 1927, a week after the National Police repressed the student demonstration of March 30, Guiteras took part in the founding of the University Student Directorate through the Faculty of Pharmacy. Soon after, the police arrested its members and took them to the Duodécima Station. Upon their release, the Directorate members adopted a clandestine regime.

Guiteras passed the final exams of his Doctorate in Pharmacy in August 1927 with outstanding grades and on the 25th of that same month, when he was only 20 years old, he received his diploma from the University of Havana.

He immediately returned to Pinar del Río to support his family, as his father had died months earlier. He began working in a private laboratory and later set up one of his own with family savings.

This business failed and he was forced to seek employment. He managed to position himself as a traveling salesman for Lerdele laboratories, whose offices were at O´Reilly, No. 24 in Havana. The laboratory was a subsidiary of the American monopoly Antioxin Laboratories. First he was assigned to the provinces of Pinar del Río, Havana and Matanzas and later to Las Villas, Camagüey and Oriente. In his travels to this last province he would come into contact with veterans of the War of 95 and young people with revolutionary concerns opposed to the tyranny of Gerardo Machado.

During the tyranny of Gerardo Machado (1925-1933), he was part of the Student Directorate of 1927 against the extension of presidential powers.

In 1933 he took up arms against the machado regime in the surroundings of San Luis, Oriente.

He was part of the Government of 100 Days as Secretary of Interior, War and Navy and he is responsible for the most important revolutionary laws of that period, among them the eight-hour workday and the intervention of the American-owned electricity company.

Measures Taken by Guiteras
He created the Department of Labor.
He established the 8-hour workday.
He set the minimum daily wage.
He purged state agencies.
He distributed lands and colonization projects.
He proclaimed university autonomy.
He called for a Constituent Assembly.
He enacted the reduction of prices of basic necessities.
He reduced the price of electrical energy.
He ordered the intervention of the Cuban Electric Company.
About these measures that demonstrated his anti-imperialist sentiment, Guiteras himself expressed: "...I have the satisfaction of having led to the signature of President Grau, the decrees that struck hardest against American imperialism..."

He fought through armed struggle against the Batista–Caffery–Mendieta regime and founded the revolutionary organization Young Cuba. He fell in combat at El Morrillo, Matanzas, on May 8, 1935.

There he was assassinated, along with Venezuelan revolutionary Carlos Aponte, by troops of the Batista-Caffery-Mendieta government who arrived there as a result of a denunciation.
"...thus was lost the most distinguished figure, the best tempered spirit, the most indomitable will, the most energetic arm and the purest spirit of the national revolutionary movement," as Raúl Roa said.