Conrado Benítez Medina

Conrado Benítez: Cuban revolutionary teacher, member of the Literacy Brigade, who together with other colleagues taught literacy to many peasants

He was born in the city of Matanzas, son of agricultural worker Diego Benítez and domestic worker Eleuterio Medina. When they separated, the boy was left in the care of his grandmother and some uncles. From his childhood, Conrado knew the hardships of life for the humble men and women of our people. He performed the most modest trades. He managed to train himself to carry out the very human gesture of joining the battle to which our youth had been called: to eliminate illiteracy.

He began as a volunteer teacher and was assigned to a school in the mountains of Sancti Spíritus, where he alternated teaching 44 children during the day with just as many adults at night.

After concluding classes at the José Tomás Rodríguez primary school in the Matanzas neighborhood, he alternated as a shoeshine boy to contribute modestly to the support of his humble home. After completing secondary education at a night school, he worked as an operator in the La Caoba bakery, where he learned the useful trade.

He moved to the capital of the country in 1958, enrolled in the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza de la Víbora, where he was surprised by the fall of the Batista dictatorship. A new life was opening up before the young man from Matanzas.

In response to the call to join the contingent of volunteer mountain teachers, he answered the call and departed for Minas de Frío, in the Sierra Maestra. After completing his training, he was assigned to teach the education plan in a small rural school in the intricate hills of Tinajitas, near the town of Trinidad.

Given the precarious conditions for teaching his classes, he managed to create his little school in a sawmill; with stakes and small boards he built desks for his students, for whom he professed a special affection, reciprocated by his simplicity and pleasant manner.

He worked tirelessly in farm labor to reciprocate the attentions he received from the couple who had welcomed him into their humble home as one more member of the family.

One day, after finishing his teaching work, he was happily heading along the little path through the hills with his gifts for the children, returning to the hospitable farm. Suddenly, he was intercepted by a band of rebels, who forcibly took him and Heliodoro Rodríguez Linares to their hideout in the Trinidad mountains. They were savagely tortured by unscrupulous men for refusing to renounce their ideals and then hanged from a leafy tree on January 5, 1961.

His example served as a banner and his name was taken to designate the literacy brigades that continued his work. Tens of thousands of young people joined the Conrado Benítez Brigades, in tribute to the first martyr teacher of the Revolution.