Julio Antonio Mella
Julio Antonio Mella
The student founder of the Cuban Communist Party martyred at 25: a face of Latin American anti-imperialism
December 1928, at a tense party meeting in Mexico City, Vittorio Vidali shouted at Mella: "Never forget — there are only two ways out of the International: expelled or dead!" A month later, Mella was assassinated on the street.
Student leader who co-founded the Communist Party of Cuba, organizing anti-imperialist student struggles at the University of Havana and establishing Cuba's first Marxist-Leninist party with Carlos Baliño in 1925. Exiled in Mexico for resisting the Machado dictatorship, he was assassinated at 25 in 1929 and became a foundational martyr of the Cuban revolutionary left, later claimed as a precursor by the Castro movement.
Career timeline
- 1922Enters University of Havana law school — co-founds FEU, serves as secretary
- 1923Becomes FEU president — convenes First National Student Congress, founds José Martí Popular University
- 1924Joins Havana Communist Group, creates Cuban section of the Anti-Imperialist League
- 1925Co-founds the Communist Party of Cuba with Carlos Baliño — Central Committee member; arrested, conducts 18-day hunger strike
- 1926Expelled from university and party — flees via Honduras and Guatemala to Mexico City
- 1926–1927Founds ANERC — writes for Cuba Libre and other revolutionary papers
- 1927Attends World Congress Against Colonial Oppression in Brussels — Moscow for RILU Fourth Congress
- 1929Shot dead on 10 January walking home in Mexico City — aged 25