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 Communism 1923–2019

Cuban revolutionary commander credited with defeating the 1961 Bay of Pigs landing (Brigade 2506)

During the Bay of Pigs invasion of 17 April 1961, Fidel Castro ordered him to command the militia and regular-army battalions fighting Brigade 2506; late on 19 April 1961 he was among the forces that broke through to Playa Girón and forced the invaders' surrender.

Cuban Communist and military leader, and later vice-president of the Council of Ministers. Born in Santiago de Cuba, he joined the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) after the 1959 revolution and held many state posts, including minister, vice-president and deputy. He was among the longest-lived historic leaders of the Cuban Revolution.

Cuba 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.

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.