Blas Roca Calderío was a prominent leader who dedicated his life to the revolutionary struggle and the Communist Party. From a young age until his death on April 25, 1987, at the age of 78, and after the triumph of the Revolution, he held high-ranking positions in the Cuban Parliament, the press, and the Communist Party.
His real name was Francisco Calderío, but in his numerous articles published in national newspapers and magazines in defense of the people's interests and against the tyrannies of Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista, he signed as Blas Roca, and that is how his name became known to posterity.
He was born in Manzanillo, in the former province of Oriente, on July 24, 1908, into a humble family. His education was almost entirely self-taught, as he only completed the fourth grade of primary school, although he read extensively and had access to countless texts with progressive social content.
In 1924, he passed the exams that qualified him to become a teacher. He worked as a substitute teacher for three months, but had to leave his job due to a lack of political recommendations, which was a requirement at the time. At age 20, he began studying Marxism-Leninism.
At 21, in 1929, he joined the Communist Party. As General Secretary of the Manzanillo Workers' Federation, he actively participated in the shoemakers' strikes that year and the dockworkers' strike of 1930. In 1931, he was tasked with organizing the Party in Oriente province and was elected to its Central Committee. Along with Lázaro Peña and Jesús Menéndez, he built a central labor organization that united all currents of the working class and projected them with a revolutionary class consciousness.
He was arrested in July 1932 and imprisoned for a year in Guantánamo. In prison, he wrote works that circulated widely underground. He published the mimeographed newspaper Voz Proletaria and contributed to Mediodía and Noticias de Hoy, and served on the editorial board of the monthly magazine El Comunista.
In late 1933, he moved to Havana, where he met Rubén Martínez Villena. In 1934, at only 26 years old, he was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party and traveled to Moscow as Cuba's delegate to the Seventh Congress of the Communist International.
Despite opposition from oligarchic sectors and predictions in the Diario de la Marina that it would have a short life, the Communist Party of Cuba managed to create a daily newspaper called Hoy, which was launched on May 16, 1938. Blas Roca was one of its editors, along with Augusto Miranda and Carlos Rafael Rodríguez.
He was elected delegate to the 1940 Constituent Assembly and served as a national deputy for his party in several legislatures. He founded and directed the magazine Fundamentos and contributed to Gaceta del Caribe, Mella, and La Última Hora. He served as Secretary General and First Vice President of the Popular Socialist Party (PSP). He actively opposed the coup of March 10, 1952, and fought against the Batista dictatorship from underground.
After the triumph of the Revolution, he was a member of the National Directorate of the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI) and later of the United Party of the Socialist Revolution of Cuba (PURSC). He was the director of the newspaper Hoy until it merged with the newspaper Revolución to form the newspaper Granma on October 3, 1965, of which he was also the director. He was the first president of the National Assembly of People's Power when it was established on December 2, 1976, a position he held until 1981.
He led the reorganization of judicial legislation to adapt it to the country's socialist structure. He actively participated in the establishment of People's Power in the province of Matanzas. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in Legal Sciences from the University of Havana in 1974 and chaired the Drafting Committee for the Preliminary Draft Constitution of the Republic, approved in 1976. Blas Roca was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and its Political Bureau from its founding in 1965, and was re-elected at every congress until his death. Numerous articles of his published in Cuba were translated into Russian, English, Romanian, Czech, Hungarian, and Vietnamese.
Due to a prolonged illness, he died on April 25, 1987. By decision of the leadership of the Revolution, he was buried in El Cacahual with the honors due to a General killed in action and, in accordance with his wishes, in bare earth.
In his eulogy, Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro said: "An exceptional man, of singular virtues and extraordinary talent, has passed away. An exemplary revolutionary who dedicated his entire life to the cause of the humble, a teacher and leader of communists for more than half a century, an indomitable fighter who for almost three decades led the first Marxist-Leninist party in Cuba."