Josué País García

Josué, the outstanding fighter, was born in Santiago de Cuba.

He was the son of Reverend Francisco País and Doña Rosario García. He was the brother of Frank País, from whom he always received special affection, and for whom he professed the deepest feeling of respect and admiration. Alongside Frank, he was forged early in the heat of revolution, despite his extreme youth. Like his brother, he was greatly influenced by his mother's education, given that his father died when Josué was two years old.

In his home, a high ethical standard prevailed, which governed the conduct of its members. Doña Rosario, while tender and loving with her children, made no concessions when they did something inappropriate. The family depended on a small pension. Likewise, Doña Rosario made sweets for the street and taught piano lessons.

His mother, Doña Rosario García, said that alongside tenderness and nobility of feelings, firmness of character and rebelliousness stood out in Josué.

On December 7, 1953, the students of Santiago took to the streets in a demonstration in tribute to the Titan of Bronze. The Batista police blocked Trinidad Street, through which the young people were coming down, and attacked them with blows. Josué picked up a stone and smashed the streetlamp under which the uniformed officers were standing. They rushed at the teenager, who was barely 15 years old, but a group of demonstrators defended him.

He stood out as a student, so in September 1956 he was awarded the Heredia Prize, which the Institute of Secondary Education awarded to the best academic record. Later, he enrolled in the Mechanical Engineering program.

Linked early on to the struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, he was part of a cell of the Eastern Revolutionary Action organization—created by his brother Frank—and in 1955 he joined the Movement of July 26.

Frank organized the Eastern Revolutionary Action (ARO) to fight against Batista's tyranny and logically, among its founders was Josué, whom, in mid-1954, they caught painting a wall with slogans saying Down with Batista! Taken to a police station, they subjected him to intense interrogation, they hung him by his feet (despite being barely 16 years old), but he only incriminated himself. They filed charges against him and sent him to trial. Being a minor, the court sentenced him to one year of house arrest.

On November 30, 1956, he was caught and arrested when he was about to carry out a risky mission in the armed uprising in the city.

After the trial in May 1957, he was released, but was forced to go underground. The house of Ángeles Montes de Oca (Aunt Angelita) served as his refuge; her three daughters, Belkis, Elsa, and Gloria Casañas, became his collaborators.

In one of the actions against tyranny during a political rally held in Céspedes Park, on June 30 of that year, he and his companions Floro Vistel and Salvador Pascual engaged in combat with an Army microwave vehicle when, together with his companions, he tried to disrupt an electoral rally organized by Rolando Masferrer, head of a paramilitary group of assassins at the service of the dictatorship, known as Masferrer's Tigers, in a central location in Santiago de Cuba. He had not yet reached 20 years of age.

The other two young men died immediately, while Josué, already wounded and arrested, received a fatal shot to the temple.

"Oh, brother, my brother! / How you leave me alone, / ruminating my deaf sorrows, / weeping your eternal absence," wrote Frank País in the poem he dedicated to his younger brother.

Josué, fallen heroically at 19 years of age, was posthumously promoted to Captain of the Militia. The funeral of Josué, Salvador, and Floro became a massive demonstration of popular mourning. The coffins were covered with flags of July 26 while the people sang the National Anthem.

Source: Eumed.net Virtual Encyclopedia