Francisco Wilfredo Calderío López

Cuban politician with communist ideology, who for many years served as Secretary General of the Popular Socialist Party (Cuba) and of the 1st Communist Party of Cuba, coming to represent it in the Chamber of Representatives. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, he was a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the National Assembly (Cuban Parliament) in its I Legislature (1976-1981).

He was born in Manzanillo, in the current province of Granma, in a working-class family. Francisco Calderío (the name with which his parents registered him) was the eldest of nine siblings and from a very early age contributed his work to support the family. He barely completed the fourth grade of elementary education and his subsequent intellectual development was self-taught.

In 1924 he passed the exams to become a qualified teacher. His teaching career lasted only three months in Media Luna, a place where he gave his first speech, on January 28th, to commemorate José Martí, the teacher of the Homeland.

The lack of an official recommendation cost him his teaching position and he then found work in a shoe factory in Manzanillo, joining the ranks of the Communist Youth League. All of this contributed to forging his conscience and character and to thinking, as he would say years later, "in a collective sense." This process would deepen rapidly when, in 1929, he was elected Secretary General of the Shoemakers' Union of Manzanillo and joined the Cuban Communist Party that Carlos Baliño, José Miguel Pérez, and Julio Antonio Mella had founded a few years before.

In August 1931 he was elected to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and put in charge of its organization in the East. During this period he displayed extensive journalistic activity in the workers' press and directed the popular mobilizations that culminated in the historic general strike of August 1933, which overthrew the dictatorship of the tyrant (president) Gerardo Machado ('The donkey with claws', named as such for his countless crimes).

Blas had matured extraordinarily in just a few years as a result of his own ability and intensive experience in workers' and popular struggles and was called to the capital at a time when the Party required firm and guiding leadership, especially since its undisputed leader at that moment, Rubén Martínez Villena, would make his last public appearance in September 1933, bidding farewell to Mella's remains, never to recover from his unfortunate illness. In this way, at the age of 26, Blas had become the highest leader of Cuban communists, representing them in the Chamber of the Republic.

Under his leadership, the Party exemplarily fulfilled its internationalist duty toward the Spanish Republic, with a formidable campaign that not only included moral and material aid, but also the sending of around a thousand fighters to the International Brigades.

In 1938, also as a result of hard struggle, adequate tactics, and a favorable international situation, the Communist Party of Cuba achieved legality and the name of Blas Roca became permanently inserted into the national political landscape. He supported the candidacy of Fulgencio Batista for the presidency of the Republic of Cuba. His phrase "Batista is the man" is well known, referring to the fact that due to his humble condition Batista could represent the socialists. He was then more hated than ever by the bourgeoisie and imperialism. The reactionary press intensified its attacks against the communist leader, accusing him of being unpatriotic and anti-nationalist. Nevertheless, the mobilization work carried out in the open, unity with progressive sectors of national life, and revolutionary propaganda, allowed for the convening of a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly for which several communist delegates were elected, among them Blas Roca, and the approval of the 1940 Constitution, in which numerous progressive provisions are reflected.

From the legality of the party, Blas maintained permanent support for the unity of the working class and all national sectors struggling for the true economic and political independence of the country. Together with Lázaro Peña, Jesús Menéndez, Ursinio Rojas and many other distinguished labor leaders, whom he helped to form, he built a trade union central that united all currents of the working class and directed them with a revolutionary class consciousness.

With the coup of March 10, 1952, which he opposed from the first moment, and July 26, 1953, which initiated a new stage of struggle in Cuban history, the Communist Party of Cuba returned to clandestinity, not to emerge from it until 1959.

A fact that should be highlighted, for its unifying character, and which adds to the recognition that had already been taking place since before the triumph of the Revolution, is the contribution to revolutionary unity made by the symbolic handover of the highest leadership of the Popular Socialist Party (Cuba) embodied in Blas, voluntary and consciously, to Fidel Castro as the undisputed political and military leader of the Cuban Revolution.

From the beginning of the Revolution's triumph, he occupied important political and governmental positions, being a member of the Political Bureau and Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), President of the National Assembly of People's Power of Cuba (Cuban Parliament) in its I Legislature (from 1976 to 1981).

Blas played a very important role in the process of consolidating the new society, among which stand out the preparation of Cuba's first socialist Constitution, ratified by the entire people, the development of the judicial system, the organization of the organs of People's Power, and his work as President of the National Assembly as the highest organ of the State. He also left numerous written works on various topics related to Cuban society, Martí's ideals, and Marxist and Leninist theory.

His record includes various national (Cuban) and international decorations, such as the 'Lenin Order' (the highest decoration awarded by the leadership of the Party and Government of the now-defunct USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics)), the medal for the 20th anniversary of the Revolution and the Clandestine Struggle, the Lázaro Peña Order of the 1st degree, etc.

Throughout his fruitful life, he was an unwavering fighter for national independence, the country's sovereignty, and the cause and ideals of socialism, and if we had to define his life, we would do so through his own words: "...it has been a battlefield, I have never stopped fighting and never, not even in the most adverse circumstance, have I lost faith in the future. That has been my shield and my flag"