People of the Revolution and the USSR

Marxism and communism 1903–1929 ✕ Assassinated

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.

Cuba state institutions Communism 1926–2016 ○ Natural causes

Leader of the hemisphere's first socialist revolution: forty-seven years against imperialism

“History will absolve me.” — courtroom speech after Moncada, 1953

Leader of Latin America's first successful socialist revolution. He opened the struggle against the Batista dictatorship with the 1953 Moncada attack, seized power through guerrilla war in 1959, and defended socialist Cuba for forty-seven years against US blockade and pressure.

Cuba state institutions Communism 1930–1989 ✕ Executed by firing squad

Cuban general of the African expeditionary campaigns

As commander of the Cuban expeditionary force in Ethiopia from 1977, he directed the Jijiga counter-offensive that, with Soviet military advisers, broke the Somali army. Sources date the recapture of Jijiga to 4 or 5 March 1978.

Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez (1930–1989) was a divisional general of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and a Hero of the Republic of Cuba. Born in Cacocum, he joined Column 2 under Camilo Cienfuegos in 1958 and fought in the Sierra Maestra, helped defeat the Bay of Pigs invasion, and sat on the Communist Party of Cuba's Central Committee for more than twenty years. He fought against the FNLA in Luanda in 1975 and in 1977 took command of the Cuban expeditionary force in Ethiopia during the Ogaden War. Awarded the Hero title in 1984, he was convicted of drug trafficking and treason in 1989 and executed by firing squad on 13 July. Sources give his second given name as Tomás or Teodomiro and his age at death as 58–59 or 57.

Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) Communism 1931–

From Moncada to the presidency: the Revolution's indispensable number two for over half a century

“Fidel is irreplaceable, unless we all replace him together, each in his own place.” — speech to university students, 2006

Core commander of the Cuban Revolution: a founding member of the 26th of July Movement who fought at Moncada (1953), survived the Granma landing to reach the Sierra Maestra, and as Comandante of the Frank País Eastern Front built a guerrilla proto-state in Oriente. As minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces from 1959 to 2008 (the longest-serving defense minister of any modern state), he forged Cuba's military and security apparatus and led the institutionalization of the Communist Party. Succeeding Fidel as president in 2008 and party first secretary in 2011, he oversaw cautious market reforms while preserving one-party rule, stepping down in 2018 and 2021 after more than half a century as the Revolution's indispensable number two.