Eduardo Bernabé Ordaz Ducungé

Cuban physician. Commander of the Rebel Army. Director of the Psychiatric Hospital of La Habana. President of the Association of Psychiatrists of Latin America.

He was born in Bauta, a town on the outskirts of La Habana. He completed his primary and secondary education at the school in the town of Cayo La Rosa, San Antonio de los Baños, La Habana. He was forced to alternate his studies with various jobs, such as newspaper vendor, shoeshine boy, store clerk, and messenger.

At the Institute of Secondary Education of Marianao, in the capital, he held the presidency of the student organization, and was a member of the executive board of the Federation of Secondary Education Institutes of Cuba. He joined the social and revolutionary struggle, taking part in student actions against the first government of Fulgencio Batista (1940 – 1944).

In 1944 he entered the Faculty of Medicine of the University of La Habana, from which he graduated in 1951. There he was president of the Association of Medical Students, and a member of the secretariat of the University Student Federation (FEU).

During that period he succeeded in establishing the Student Clinic at the General Hospital Calixto García, for which – by agreement No. 12 of the University Council Session held on March 7, 1952 – the name of Dr. Eduardo Bernabé Ordaz was proposed, in honor of its founder. The proposal was accepted by the Board of Trustees of the Hospital "General Calixto García".

In 1952 he began working as a resident physician in anesthesiology at the Hospital "General Calixto García", which became a stronghold of clandestine activities and actions against the Batista dictatorship. From that same year, Dr. Ordaz joined several revolutionary organizations. He was part of the organizing commission of a failed attack on the Military City Columbia barracks, and participated in various actions, among others, the repair of weapons that would be used in the struggle against the dictatorship. He was detained by the repressive forces of the tyranny on thirteen occasions, one of them in 1953 – along with eleven other young men, among whom were Fructuoso Rodríguez and Álvaro Barba – because members of the Bureau of Investigation, directed by Colonel Orlando E. Piedra Negueruela, had seized weapons and ammunition at the FEU premises on the university hill.

Very early on he became linked to the Revolutionary Movement of July 26th. He was called to join the Rebel Army in the Sierra Maestra in January of 1958. Upon arriving in that mountainous territory in the eastern region of the Island, he was taken to the camp of Commander Universo Sánchez, where physician Faustino Pérez was also present, who had arrived in Cuba with Fidel Castro on the yacht Granma. With Faustino Pérez and Commander René Ramos Latour, Daniel, Dr. Ordaz set out toward La Plata, an enclave of the General Command of the Rebel Army. Days later they arrived at the camp of Commander Ramiro Valdés, where Commander Médico of the Rebel Army Sergio del Valle was also present, and they continued their march. Once in La Plata, they made contact with Celia Sánchez, who informed them of the project to build a properly supplied hospital in the camp, which would bear the name of Mario Muñoz Monroy, to honor the memory of the physician who fell in the Assault on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953.

While the hospital was being constructed, wounded and sick began to be treated in the residence where the physicians were lodged. Bernabé Ordaz participated in the construction of the La Plata hospital, and directed it throughout the entire war, with regulations that he himself drafted and submitted for consideration by the Command, which approved them without amendments.

On August 15, 1958, along with the order from Fidel Castro declaring the La Plata hospital a completely autonomous institution, Dr. Ordaz received his promotion to the rank of captain. After the battle of Guisa, he attended to the wounded of both the rebel troops and a soldier of the tyranny, and marched to Charco Redondo, Bayamo, in the current province of Granma, where the hospital that already existed in the manganese mines of that area was adapted, and which, from that point on, would be the first rebel hospital in the zone. After organizing it, Dr. Ordaz, together with Dr. Julio Martínez Páez, joined the Invasion Column. Once the war concluded he was promoted to the rank of commander by Commander Camilo Cienfuegos, chief of staff of the Rebel Army.

On January 9, 1959, only one day after Fidel Castro's entry into La Habana, Bernabé Ordaz was appointed director of the Psychiatric Hospital of La Habana (former Mazorra), due to his sensitive and elevated spirit and his qualities as an organizer. Fidel entrusted him with the task of immediately humanizing care for the patients of the Psychiatric Hospital, where they were crowded, naked, and starving, without adequate medical treatment.

The center he was to direct had its origins in the General House for the Insane of the Island of Cuba, founded in 1857 on lands of the Potrero Ferro, property of José Mazorra. Its first buildings had been designated for male mental patients, and, from 1862 onward, construction of pavilions for women had begun.

In the years prior to 1959 the hospital experienced its darkest period due to the neglect it suffered. It had fourteen pavilions for women, fifteen for men, one for children, and one dedicated to clinical treatments, and, with a capacity for 2,000 patients, it housed more than 6,500, the majority unidentified, with insufficient or nonexistent medical treatment. Many were chained or restrained to beds as the only means of controlling their crises.

Once he assumed the directorship of the hospital, Bernabé Ordaz undertook the first measures to transform it into a truly capable institution able to restore mental health and human dignity to its patients, beginning with the cleaning and repair of the pavilions, and dedicated the last forty years of his life to implementing and putting into practice the profound transformations that converted the Hospital for the Insane of Cuba into the Psychiatric Hospital of La Habana, where thousands of chronic patients who had remained in total abandonment for years were rehabilitated.

In 1962 an Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation Service was built at the Psychiatric Hospital. From 1969 to 1978, ten editions of the Sports Festival and Carnival Party were held, with the participation of patients. In 1973 the Psychoballet Service was created as a therapeutic method.

In 1994 the patients of the institution participated in the First International Mental Health Olympics, held in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, and obtained second place, with twenty-four gold medals, twenty silver medals, and twelve bronze medals. In 2003 – in the framework of celebrations for the 484th anniversary of the founding of the town of San Cristóbal de La Habana – the Carnival Party and Sports Festival were held in its eleventh edition.

To provide better care for his patients, the until then anesthesiologist physician became a psychiatrist. He obtained the status of Specialist in Psychiatry in March of 1998, and in an extraordinary session of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba he was granted the condition of Full Academician on September 19 of that same year.

His activities within the Cuban Society of Psychiatry, as well as in the Latin American Society of Psychiatry and in the International Society of Psychology, were highly distinguished. During the period in which he directed the most important psychiatric institution in the country, the celebration of the PsicoHabana Congresses began, which were attended by hundreds of foreign delegates, interested in the high scientific level of this hospital center, evident in its practical actions. Thanks to the quality of care they received, the average life expectancy of patients was increased to seventy-seven years of age.

The patients called Ordaz "papá"; his colleagues and subordinates, "Comandante", and all showed him respect and admiration.

Among the numerous recognitions that Dr. Ordaz received throughout his years of dedicated work, the National Union of Health Workers granted him the distinction of National Hero of Labor, and the Cuban Society for the History of Medicine conferred upon him the status of Honorary Member, for his contribution to the history of Cuban psychiatry and public health.

On January 13, 2004, Dr. Bernabé Ordaz received the honorary title of Founding Director of the Psychiatric Hospital of La Habana.

His figure was identified with the wide-brimmed hat and the rebel beard he always wore. His honesty, courage, and loyalty to the most humanitarian principles were also present at his desk full of papers, accompanied by a bible and a rosary. On the walls of his office hung a rosary along with several mementos from his revolutionary life.

Dr. Bernabé Ordaz passed away on May 21, 2006, at the Center for Medical-Surgical Research (CIMEQ) in La Habana, as a result of a kidney ailment.