Carlos Benigno Baliño López

One of the most lucid precursors of Cuban Marxist thought. He bridged two generations: alongside José Martí he founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party, and alongside Julio Antonio Mella, the Communist Party of Cuba.

He is the example of an honest and dignified fighter against all forms of human slavery, against injustices; he is the example of an entire life dedicated to sincere struggle for collective well-being.

He was born in Guanajay, which at that time belonged to the province of Pinar del Río. He studied accounting and architecture, but did not complete them. Still very young, he collaborated with articles and poems in "El Fénix," "El Alacrán," and "La Crítica," from Guanajay.

In 1868 he entered the San Alejandro Academy of Painting, but due to the serious family situation caused by his father's imprisonment in Fernando Poo, he was forced to abandon his studies.

After failing in his attempts to find work in Havana in small tobacco workshops, he moved to the United States in late 1868 or in 1869. He lived in Key West, Tampa, New York, and New Orleans.

He died in 1926. Rather than an obituary, the newspaper "El boletín" of the cigarmakers left as an epitaph for the tomb of the fallen combatant an article titled "The Fall of the Oak," which in one of its paragraphs stated: "The workers of Cuba and especially the communists have lost one of their best activists."

In the period between 1868 and 1869 he developed an extensive and very important revolutionary activity, while at the same time earning his living as a tobacco worker. In Key West he was a member of the Selectors' Guild, participated actively in the labor movement, and collaborated in "El Yara." In Tampa he contributed to founding Ibor City, was co-founder, with Ramón Rivero, of the first labor guild, "Knights of Labor," and founded two lodges.

He returned to Key West, where he was editor of the newspaper La Tribuna del Pueblo, from which he carried out propaganda work for the freedom of Cuba and of the working class. He went again to Tampa to found the lodge Unión y Fraternidad. He met José Martí and in 1892, in Key West, he signed the bylaws and founding act of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, founded by Martí. He was president of the Club Francisco Vicente Aguilera. During these months, as part of constant work in favor of independence, he accompanied Martí on a tour through the Florida peninsula. He took an active part in the clubs Enrique Roig and 10 de abril, in Tampa, founded in January 1893.

Economic insecurity forced him to emigrate to Georgia, where a colony of Cubans was established. He presided over the Club Leopoldo Turla and later the Fermín Salvoechea, organized in the Municipality of Martí City, in which Baliño was elected first member. Shortly after he was vice president of the Club Ramón Pintó.

In Tampa he collaborated with Pablo Rousseau in the founding of La Nueva República (1897). He worked as a collector or fund raiser in tobacco factories in Jacksonville.

After all these years in the United States, where he developed intense political propaganda work alongside Martí and other figures of the emigration—both in the organizations and institutions he founded or in which he collaborated, as well as in the press and from the podium, some of whose participations were included in the newspaper Patria, founded by Martí—and where he was enriched by the experience of working as a tobacco worker.

After the war against Spain ended in 1898 he returned to Cuba. In 1902 he published articles in the press against economic abuses. He was forced to earn his living in small tobacco workshops, as he was not admitted to the large production centers. During this period he continued his political activity, especially in the organization of the Labor Party (1904)—transformed at his insistence into the Socialist Labor Party—and with his work in La Voz Obrera, the party's publication, where he published an article in support of the Russian revolution of 1905.

In 1906 he signed the founding act of the Socialist Party of Cuba, which emerged from the merger of the Socialist Labor Party and the International Socialist Group, also created with his contribution. He was a member of the Socialist Group of Havana, of which he became president in 1910, replacing Ramón Belmonte, after the most prominent workers in the Havana Sewer Strike were expelled from the country.

He collaborated during this period in El Socialista, the publication of the aforementioned Group. He collaborated, in addition to the publications already mentioned, in El Productor, El Obrero Cigarrero, Justicia and Lucha de Clases, of which he was also director. From 1919 onwards he contributed to reorganizing small socialist groups into communist associations.

In 1922 he took over the direction of Espartaco, the position of proofreader of Boletín del Torcedor and of the magazine Juventud, directed by Julio Antonio Mella, whom he had met that same year at the print shop where both publications were edited. Together with Mella and other activists he founded the Communist Party of Cuba in 1925. In addition to his speeches and propaganda work in the press, he cultivated the short story.