Juan Manuel Márquez Rodríguez

Revolutionary combatant. He belonged to the Cuban Revolutionary Party (Authentic) and the Party of the Cuban People (Orthodox). He was the second in command of the Granma expedition.

He was born in Santa Fe, west of Havana. He began his first studies in a public school in the town of Punta Brava, in Havana, and in 1928, when his family moved to Marianao, he finished them at the Academia Agramonte.

In 1931 he joined the insurgent movement against the tyranny of Gerardo Machado, planning, with other comrades, an armed action at the Coca farm in Marianao; but when he did not receive the weapons he expected, the group was forced to withdraw from the place. After the failure of the insurrection, the regime's repressive forces raided his home, and he was taken to prison for the first time, along with his father.

That same year he continued his studies at the Institute of Secondary Education in Havana. He joined the organization Radical Student Sector, which held an anti-Machado position and was composed only of adolescents. As one of its most prominent members, he took part in rallies and public acts.

He founded and directed the newspaper Radical, which had a short life, as the place where it was printed was occupied by the police. Due to his conspiratorial activities, on April 8, 1932 he was arrested and taken to the so-called Presidio Modelo, on the Isle of Pines (today the special municipality Isle of Youth). At only seventeen years old, he was the youngest political prisoner in the penal institution.

After Machado's fall he assumed the General Secretariat of the Radical Student Sector. In November 1933 he created another newspaper: Catapulta, in which he exposed and transmitted his political thinking.

In 1934 he fought against the government headed by Carlos Mendieta Montefur, which he characterized in the article "Flag at Half-Mast". His activities were multiple: sabotage acts, attacks, rallies, strikes and demonstrations. In 1935 he became associated with members of Young Cuba and acted in several actions by that organization. He prepared and directed the strike in March of that year in Marianao, and joined the Brotherhood of Young Cubans, created by the Communist Party of Cuba.

In 1936, the Emergency Court of Havana sentenced him to eight years in prison for his revolutionary activities. By virtue of an amnesty law he was released in the last days of December 1937.

In 1938 he entered the Institute of Secondary Education in Marianao to complete his studies, and on November 14, 1939 he was elected president of the Student Committee of the school. Graduated as a bachelor in 1940, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the University of Havana, although later he was forced to abandon it.

He affiliated with the Cuban Revolutionary Party (Authentic), whose Youth Section he founded in 1941. In 1943, in the Los Pocitos neighborhood, in the municipality of Marianao, he was appointed as a delegate to the municipal assembly of the party. His roots among the masses led them to elect him councilman in the elections of 1943 and 1946.

The work he carried out in that position was one of tenacious confrontation against political maneuvering and shady dealings of the time. In the municipal chamber he opposed every initiative aimed at harming any public interest, voted against an extension for the Oriental Park Racetrack Operating Company, demanded prompt payment to municipal administration workers and created the journalistic award for Local Exaltation César San Pedro.

As of May 15, 1947, when the Party of the Cuban People (Orthodox) was established, Juan Manuel Márquez was one of its most active members, and dedicated his political work to structuring the party in his jurisdiction. Months later, appointed president of the municipal assembly of the Orthodox Party of Marianao, he displayed extraordinary work in favor of the organization.

His oratorical ability, his radical thinking and his experience in struggle made him worthy of inaugurating, on May 7, 1948, the program "The Hour of Revolutionary Orthodoxy" on the radio station Radio COCO.

When the station was shut down in 1949 by President Carlos Prío Socarrás, Juan Manuel Márquez was prosecuted judicially. His voice later appeared in the daily radio program "Shame Against Money".

On March 10, 1952, from a clandestine radio station through which he broadcast a program titled "The Voice of Freedom", he denounced the coup d'état directed by Fulgencio Batista. He immediately joined and became part of the leadership of the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), directed by university professor Rafael García Bárcena.

On June 5, 1955, in the evening, Juan Manuel Márquez was arrested and brutally assaulted by forces of the Batista regime. As a consequence of the injuries he received he was admitted to the Santa Emilia clinic. There he received a visit from Melba Hernández Rodríguez del Rey, who delivered to him a letter from Fidel Castro Ruz, in which he invited him to join the Movement of July 26 as second in responsibility.

On June 12 following, he joined that organization, and in accordance with the plans previously drawn up by Fidel Castro, he set sail for the United States, accompanying the revolutionary leader on his tour through U.S. cities to gather the emigration and raise funds.

He took part in the organization of the Movement of July 26 and in the preparations for Fidel Castro's strategic plan, organized the revolutionary elements, developed collections for the acquisition of weapons, worked in the formation of military camps, located suitable sites to train the expeditionaries who would arrive at Cuban shores on the yacht Granma, did propaganda and constituted delegations.

He left on November 25, 1956 from Tuxpan, Mexico, in the aforementioned vessel, as second in command of the expedition. On December 2, 1956, with the first light of dawn, the vessel touched Cuban soil at Las Coloradas, in the municipality of Niquero, on the southwestern coast of Oriente.

On December 5 the expeditionaries were surprised by the Batista army in a wooded cay very close to the sugar colony Alegría de Pío; in the retreat, Juan Manuel Márquez separated from his companions. During long journeys he wandered about, subjected to the torments of thirst and hunger, with the intention of reaching the Sierra Maestra.

On the 15th of December he fell into the hands of the army through a denunciation. They tortured him and shot him in the cane field of the Norma farm, near the San Román sugar mill, where he was left for dead.

His corpse was buried in the same place during the night. After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, in January 1959, his remains were transferred to the cemetery of the municipality of La Lisa, and subsequently placed in the Pantheon of the Expeditionaries of the Granma in the Necrópolis Cristóbal Colón.