Ramiro Valdés Daussá

Outstanding student, athlete, professor, and Cuban revolutionary fighter. One of the leaders of the University Student Directory (DEU) of 1930. The University of Havana constituted for him home, trench, conscience, and hope. He knew nothing of rest, discouragement, or pessimism.

He was born in the province of Pinar del Río. He began his engineering studies at the University of Havana, where he was among the founders of the University Student Directory of 1930. Due to his political activities against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado, he suffered imprisonment in the Castillo del Príncipe and in the National Penitentiary for Men, known as Presidio Modelo, on Isla de Pinos (today Isla de la Juventud). There he taught classes to inmates and learned of the murder of his brothers Solano and José Antonio by Machado's police on April 6, 1933.

Following the strike of August 12, 1933, which forced Gerardo Machado to resign, a military uprising by sergeants, corporals, and enlisted men—in which Sergeant Fulgencio Batista participated—took place on September 4 of that same year at the Columbia military camp. Student leaders participated, including Valdés Daussá, as well as leaders of the University Student Directory, Pro Ley y Justicia, and the ABC Radical, in addition to some university professors such as Sergio Carbó, who formed the Revolutionary Grouping of Cuba.

Ramiro Valdés Daussá participated actively in the Government of the Hundred Days, presided over by Ramón Grau San Martín, in which he played a determining role in the enactment of revolutionary laws, alongside Antonio Guiteras.

He was founder in 1933 of the newspaper Luz, the organ of the DEU. In 1934 he completed his Engineering studies with the degree of distinguished student. He then deployed intense revolutionary activity alongside Pablo de la Torriente Brau. He stood out in the student purifying assemblies against Machado professors. He was delegate for the Faculty of Letters and Sciences, together with Ángel Colina, as a member of the student commission elected to evaluate, in the Mixed Purification Commission, the total expulsion of members of the disciplinary courts.

He was part of the committee that attempted to promote university reform. On January 15, 1934, Fulgencio Batista, as head of the army, overthrew the Government of the 100 Days to establish a reactionary government that would exercise a negative influence on the political and social destiny of the nation until 1944. Under these conditions, Valdés Daussá was a prominent participant in opposition to it, which is why he was elected as a member of the United Front of Student Struggle.

He was founder of Revolutionary Left (IR), a group that, together with the Anti-Imperialist Cuban Revolutionary Organization (ORCA), conceived and promoted, in 1936, the idea of holding a meeting in Miami of all leftist parties and organizations that had emerged during or immediately after the Machado period, with the purpose of creating a single anti-imperialist revolutionary front.

In 1937 he founded, together with Raúl Roa García and José Zacarías Tallet, the Revolutionary Left Party (PIR), with a revolutionary program. In August of that same year, he was part of the assembly of the Cuban Revolutionary Party (Auténtico), created in 1934, when part of the PIR merged with that party.

He was an activist of the Association for Aid to Spanish People's Children (AANPE). This institution, which remained in operation until March 1940, deployed notable activity in favor of children who were victims of fascist aggression; he initially served as a vocal member and member of the Association's Propaganda Commission and in February 1938 was appointed president of it, with Doctor Luis Álvarez Tabío as vice president and Eduardo René Chibás Ribas as secretary of records.

In June 1939 he assumed direction of the magazine Ayuda, the official propaganda organ of AANPE. Valdés Daussá also served as leader (1937–1938) of the Sports Commission of the Brotherhood of Young Cubans—a mass organization of Revolutionary Union, the legal form of the Communist Party.

He participated as a candidate delegate in the constitutional convention in 1939 for the National Agrarian Party (PAN); he separated from this organization because he considered it did not maintain a combative stance against the government. At that time he served as professor of the Drawing Chair in the Faculty of Engineering at the University, from where he denounced the criminal activities of the so-called "bonchistas," real gangster groups that acted with complete impunity within the university grounds. The first offensive action against these groups within the student movement was his memorable speech on September 30, 1939, before the tomb of Rafael Trejo, where he denounced the demoralization and bad practices existing in that high academic institution. Consistent with his words, he offered himself to combat the terrorist movement that, as a manifestation of prevailing political corruption, threatened to undermine the prestige of the University.

Between September 1939 and August 1940—months in which, without receiving any salary except that which he received as a professor, he organized and assumed the direction of the University Security Corps—significant events took place such as the demonstration of November 27, the National Congress of Students (from November 27 to December 2), and the escalation of criminal bonchista activity. He chose his teaching assistant, student Manuel de Castro, as second chief of the university police. The measures established by Valdés Daussá managed to reduce somewhat the activities of bonchismo and gave an apparent sense of normalcy. He and Manuel de Castro ceased their positions as heads of the University Police to assume other responsibilities.

On August 6, 1940, Roberto Meoqui, a former lieutenant of the National Police in the first government of Ramón Grau San Martín, and Orestes Martínez, president of the Association of Pedagogy Students, took the positions of chief and subchief, respectively. Although criminal activities diminished, the bonchistas decreed the death of the professor.

On the night of August 15, in front of the house where he was accustomed to dining, at the corner of Mazón Street No. 18 and Neptune, at the moment he was getting into his automobile, they fired numerous shots at him, assassinating him treacherously. According to investigations carried out later by the police, weapons and various devices used in the criminal activities carried out by the bonchistas were found in the house at Infanta Street No. 204—the place where the Alma Mater Society met—and among the papers a sketch was found detailing the location where the crime had been committed. It was later learned that the assassins were linked to figures in the government, fundamentally to men of confidence of Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar, who actually held power. The remains of the distinguished professor and revolutionary fighter rest in the Cristóbal Colón Necropolis.

Source: Eumed.net