Rafael Trejo González

Cuban student leader, murdered by the police of dictator Gerardo Machado during a demonstration. Representative patriot of the Municipality of Diez de Octubre. A complete athlete, he stands out as a rower. He plays chess very well. An avid reader of Martí and José Ingenieros.

He was born in San Antonio de los Baños, in the current province of Artemisa. His mother, Adela González Díaz, worked as a rural teacher. His father, a tobacco worker turned doctor of law, served as a municipal official in the town hall of the locality.

In 1919 the family moved to the Havana neighborhood of la Víbora. Felo, as his parents called him, spent long hours in his room studying; he was a good reader, a conversationalist of sharp sensitivity, intelligent, understanding, trying to interpret national affairs which were very active at the time, as there were frequent Disciplinary Councils with expulsion of university students, deprived of continuing their studies.

He was optimistic, healthy, strong, courageous but delicate, harboring faith in the future. Trejo possessed a radiant and attractive personality. By his purity and tenderness he seemed a happy, curious big child, whom no major sorrow had darkened. He enjoyed classical music but also popular street music, dancing and romantic pursuits.

Tall, with a broad chest and back, with long limbs and a flexible body, his presence was noticeable in his expressive and very dark complexioned face, jet-black hair and mustache, large and deep eyes, and a serene and majestic bearing, of a man confident in himself. He liked to invite his male and female friends to spend the afternoon at the house, they would play the piano, dance, sing and turn the radio up loud.

He completed his early studies at public school number 46. He entered Colegio Belén, where with brilliant grades he completed the first three years of high school. The fourth year he did at the Instituto de La Habana with the highest grades. He graduated with his high school diploma at age 17.

On the day in 1927 that he enrolled in the Law degree at the Universidad de La Habana, he met Raúl Roa, who used to remember him as "a young lad with lustrous hair, dark complexion, Mongol mustache, broad torso and agile musculature".

From that very day a great friendship was born between them. Felo then confessed to him:

"I am going to enroll in Public Law and Civil Law. I believe I have chosen the career most in keeping with my vocation and temperament. For many nights I have dreamed of the judge's bench; but do not think that my aspiration is to become rich at the expense of others. My ideal is to be able to defend one day the poor and the persecuted. My gown will always be in service of justice. I also aspire to be useful to Cuba. I am prepared to sacrifice everything to see her as Martí wished."

The course had begun that month because intense student agitation against the Extension of Powers with the subsequent disciplinary councils had extended the previous semester until October.

Just after Trejo enrolled at the Universidad de La Habana, on November 9, 1927, a disciplinary council would be held in the building of the School of Chemistry against 50 students, accused of tearing down propaganda signs that the tyranny had put up at the construction sites of the Staircase. The enraged youths, prompted by speeches, forced open the doors of the building with a wooden beam and prevented the council from taking place. Among the organizers was Rafael Trejo. Thirteen students including Trejo were provisionally expelled that same afternoon by rectorial decision and more than 600 remained subject to disciplinary councils.

At the University he became involved in the actions carried out by the student body against the tyranny of Machado, for the recognition of university autonomy and to carry out the plan of reforms and purge of the faculty proposed by Julio Antonio Mella. In 1930 the struggle against the tyrant intensified.

Already in 1930, Trejo along with other students made the plaque disappear from the School of Law that glorified the regime. In the university elections that year Trejo was elected vice president of the Association of Students of the School of Law. From here he tried to channel the aspirations of the student body and secretly conspired against the tyrant.

Those months that preceded September were of intense activity. The student body was organizing itself. The phenomenon of agglutination of the student body, like the proletariat and the small racial bourgeoisie, was becoming more and more pronounced.

An intense revolutionary activity was developing, clandestine meetings were held and manifestos, proclamations and speeches were drafted; the student body demanded the rehabilitation of students expelled for their revolutionary activities and the immediate resignation of Machado. A demonstration was called for at Alfaro Park for September 30 and from there to march to the Presidential Palace.

On September 30 Trejo dressed in his most worn suit and a silver hat as a sign of protest. The day before at the DEU headquarters in a joking tone he had proposed that what was needed was a victim.

A large display of police and army battalions prepared to prevent the mobilization, machine guns were set up at different strategic points in the city, the garrison of the Castillo de la Fuerza was reinforced and the squadrons of the Tercio Táctico were quartered at the Campamento de Columbia. Despite this, students and people gathered at the agreed upon place.

The police initiated an enveloping movement; at the same time Trejo and Pepitín Leyva climbed to the roof of the Ravelo building, from where they rained down a barrage of stones on the police.

The demonstration went down the staircase and the police charged violently against it; a terrible confusion occurred at the corner of San Lázaro and Infanta, Pablo de la Torriente Brau fell wounded, using only his fists as a weapon, and as Marinello went to help him he was arrested.

While this was happening Trejo at Jovellar and Infanta in a courageous outburst became engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a policeman, Díaz Baldoquín came to his aid trying to snatch the weapon from the murderer. A gunshot rang out and Felo collapsed bleeding profusely on the pavement covered with shell casings and manifestos.

On the day of his death, Felo grabbed his straw hat painted aluminum, his support for the Hat Makers' Strike, and placed on it the leaf corresponding to that day torn from a large almanac that hung on the wall. And he said:
"I am going to put you here, because you, September 30, are going to enter the history of Cuba"

He was taken to the Emergencias Hospital and subjected to a risky operation. He died at 9:50 p.m. He became the necessary victim as he himself had said. The funeral was on October 2 at 5 in the afternoon accompanied by a multitude of students and people who chanted anti-Machado slogans.

From Pablo and Roa
Trejo's Funeral

Later Pablo de la Torriente Brau recounts, in his encounter with Trejo inside the hospital:

"I will never be able to forget the smile with which Trejo greeted me, when they brought him to the emergency room only a few minutes after me and placed him at my side. I was vomiting blood and almost faint with weakness; but his smile despite everything produced a strange indefinable sensation in me. It was something like if the anger of the fight returned to me despite the blood lost, it was that I already knew, that Trejo with his powerful 20 years, was dying. Between spell and spell, I had been able to hear these words that I perceived strangely as if I were inside a radio that sounded far away with a little static: This one will be saved…if there are no fractures… the head wounds are very dramatic, a lot of blood is lost… but that poor boy will not be saved even by god… he has internal bleeding, internal…"

Raúl Roa regarding the figure of Trejo comments:
"Like all those who enlisted in this battle with a revolutionary ideology and with their chests empty of ambitions, Trejo did not go out that morning to risk his life, as he risked it, for advancement…,. He knew that, as we know, that in the clock of history had sounded, with solemn bells the hour of the oppressed, whose needs and aspirations were ignored and strangled by the social regime based on the exploitation of man by man. Although Trejo did not formally serve in the left, it is obvious that by his generous feelings, his incorruptible honesty and his passionate faith in a more just and beautiful world, he was closer to us than the right eager for power and wealth"

Source: EcuRed