Isidoro Malmierca Peoli

A leader with an extensive trajectory in the direction of the Cuban state. At the triumph of the Revolution, he was a founder of the State Security Organs and participated in the construction of the Communist Party and was part of the Central Committee Secretariat. He also served as vice minister of Fishing, and created the magazine Mar y Pesca. He was founding director of the Periódico Granma and for more than 15 years Minister of Foreign Relations.

He was born in Lawton, La Habana. Son of a small merchant, he achieved initial self-taught preparation, based on a Masonic education.

His father belonged to Freemasonry and that circumstance influenced his son to become a member of the youth branch of that institution: the Association of Young Men Hope of Fraternity, founded in Cuba by the initiative of a blind Mason named Fernando Suárez Núñez. Malmierca became Secretary of the National Chamber.

In the ranks of Socialist Youth, he went on to perform leadership functions and also deployed work within the international communist movement, participating in foreign events.

During the neocolonial governments, he was involved in the turbulences of Cuba, being a left-wing politician. Within the Popular Socialist Party, he managed to give the organization experience and discipline.

At the triumph of the Revolution on January 1st, 1959, he directed the magazine Mella, the organ of Socialist Youth, later the magazine became a factor of unity for Cuban youth and a very effective weapon of combat. It possessed content and a structure very attractive to young people.

After 1959, he intervened in the fusion process of the three main political organizations that had participated in the armed struggle: the Popular Socialist Party, the 26th of July Movement, and the 13th of March Revolutionary Directorate into the Communist Party of Cuba.

He was the first Chief of the Department of State Security and later founder and Vice Minister of the newly created Ministry of Interior under the direction of Commander Ramiro Valdés.

In 1965, when the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba was created, he was one of its members. That year he was appointed editor of Diario Granma. Subsequently he became part of the Cuban diplomatic service.

Later he was appointed vice minister in the Ministry of Fishing, at which time he founded the Magazine Mar y Pesca. In 1975 the Central Committee of the Party led him to become a member of the Secretariat, presiding over the commission that drafted the project of Party Statutes.

He was a member of the commission that drafted the Fundamental Law project, under the presidency of Blas Roca, while he presided over the commission for the new political-administrative division that the country would have.

In 1976, when Raúl Roa García was elected vice president of the National Assembly of People's Power, he was appointed Minister of Foreign Relations and vice president of the Council of Ministers. In this stage, he had active participation in the solution of armed conflicts in Africa, Central America, and the Middle East.

In 1981, he expressed at an international conference that:
"the priorities of Cuba's foreign policy were aimed at combating apartheid in South Africa, Zionism in the Middle East, and imperialism in Central America"
That year, he denounced the typically colonial arrogance of Great Britain and the United States at the moment of the Malvinas conflict with Argentina.

In 1992, when he was relieved of his position due to health problems, he went on to head an entity in charge of providing information to future investors in Cuba, the magazine Business Tips on Cuba.

He died on August 11, 2001, a victim of lung cancer.

In 1997 he wrote the book "Seventy Years for Cuba," which is not an autobiography, but everything that appears in it is autobiographical. They are anecdotes of life, from childhood until the last year of life.