Julio Antonio Mella

Cuban revolutionary. He was the first general secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (1924). After participating in the Anti-imperialist Congress of Brussels (1927), he organized in Mexico the continental committee of the Anti-imperialist League. He was assassinated by agents of Gerardo Machado.

He appears registered in the Civil Registry as Nicanor McPartland. In his childhood he visited New Orleans (United States) several times in the company of his mother.

He began to stand out as a student leader and athlete upon entering the University of Havana. Soul of the university reform and president of the First National Congress of Students, founder of the Popular University José Martí, of the Anti-clerical League, of the Cuban Section of the Anti-imperialist League of the Americas and of Cuba's first Communist Party. Due to his revolutionary activities against Machado's dictatorship he is expelled from the University.

He led a famous hunger strike that shocked the country, and received the Soviet merchant ship "Vatzlav Vorovsky", which arrived at a Cuban port in August 1925. His life was always dedicated to fighting for the rights of the working class. Tenaciously persecuted, he went into exile in Mexico, where he carried out extensive journalistic and anti-imperialist work. Hired thugs of Gerardo Machado's tyranny assassinated him there. His last words were: "I die for the Revolution".

He did his primary education in several Catholic schools in the capital. At Newton Academy he was a student of Mexican poet Salvador Díaz Mirón. With the purpose of studying a military career he traveled to Mexico around 1920. He returns immediately to Cuba. He obtains his Bachelor's degree from the Institute of Secondary Education of Pinar del Río (1921). That same year he enrolls in Law and Philosophy and Letters at the University of Havana.

His first journalistic works appeared in the university magazine Alma Mater (1922-1923), of which he was administrator. In January 1923 he is a leader of the student struggle for university reform. He founds the Federation of University Students.

In October 1923 he organizes and directs the First National Congress of Students, and in November he inaugurates the Popular University "José Martí", with the purpose of providing political and academic instruction to workers and of linking the University "with the needs of the oppressed".

He was director and editor of Juventud (1923-1925), founder of the Anti-clerical League (1924) and of the Cuban section of the Anti-imperialist League of the Americas (1925). He founds the Polytechnic Institute "Ariel" together with Alfonso Bernal del Riesgo in 1925. He is the first secretary of organization of the Communist Party of Cuba and one of its founders (1925).

He was expelled from the University of Havana. Detained, he declares a hunger strike. The Pro-freedom Committee for Mella launches a campaign to free him, national and international pressure is felt, and he is released on December 23, 1925. In early 1926 he embarks for Honduras.

In Mexico he connects with the continental and international revolutionary movement. He collaborates in the newspapers Cuba Libre, El Libertador, Tren Blindado, El Machete and Boletín del Torcedor (the latter from Havana). He delivers lectures, publishes critiques on Mexican muralism.

In February 1927 he attends the World Congress against colonial oppression and imperialism, held in Brussels. He participates in the National Peasant League of Mexico. He engaged in a polemic with Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre regarding the political significance of APRA.

From Brussels he travels to Moscow, where he participates in the Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions. Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Mexico, he fights for agrarian reform, for the nationalization of oil and in miners' strikes. He founds several anti-imperialist, student and peasant organizations. With Leonardo Fernández Sánchez and Alejandro Barreiro he organizes the Association of New Cuban Revolutionary Emigrants, ANERC (1927).

Among the unpublished works he left behind is "Where is Cuba Headed". He used the pseudonyms Cuauhtémoc Zapata, Kim (El Machete), and Lord McPartland.

He was assassinated in Mexico City by order of Cuban dictator Gerardo Machado.