Inocencia Valdés Fraga

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Outstanding tobacco worker, active feminist social activist who demands labor rights for her class, founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Party and creator in Key West of the Mariana Grajales Patriotic Club.

She was born in Güines, Black and daughter of a humble tobacco worker.

After 1878, the female workforce in the tobacco industry increased. The shortage of labor caused a widespread emigration to Tampa and Key West. Inocencia went to the United States as a leader of the tobacco stemmers' union; there she established fraternal relationships with the most discontented sectors of patriotic emigration; she met José Martí, and became a combative founding activist of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, among whose clubs she was seen as the unifying soul of different groups.

Always working as a tobacco stemmer, she founded in Key West the Mariana Grajales Patriotic Club. Among so many impactful moments in her life, she had the mission of fulfilling the painful duty of spreading, among the clubs and emigrants, the unexpected death of José Martí. There she cooperated to unite wills, raise funds, elevate the revolutionary spirit and support the libertarian cause among all the emigration.

By 1913 she possessed sufficient maturity to be an active feminist social activist who demands labor rights for her class. She became treasurer of the Tobacco Stemmers' Union and managed to achieve a sincere friendship with Julio Antonio Mella.

In 1933, she joined the National Union of Workers in the Sugar Industry, affiliated with the National Workers' Confederation of Cuba. She participated in the founding of the National Tobacco Federation in 1936.

Two years later, she became the top leader of the tobacco stemmers' union and, in 1939, worked closely with Lázaro Peña, founding the Confederation of Cuban Workers. Throughout all these moments was the presence of Inocencia Valdés Fraga, the communist, who advocated for and achieved close union of struggles among activists, tobacco workers, workers and people in general.

In 1940, she joined the Communist Revolutionary Union Party and subsequently the Popular Socialist Party, from which she supported the Draft Law for the Retirement of Tobacco Industry Employees and Workers, sponsored by Lázaro Peña. She died at age 84.