Carlos Baliño y López, at the age of 43 in 1892, was a founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, created by José Martí, and at 76, in 1925, of the Communist Party with Julio Antonio Mella.He is considered one of the most insightful forerunners of Cuban Marxist thought.
Baliño was born in Guanajay on February 13, 1849, 177 years ago, and had the historical distinction of uniting two generations: that of Martí and that of Mella. From his Marxist background and as a journalist, he contributed to the development of the workers' press in Cuba.
According to José Martí, "Carlos Baliño is a Cuban who suffers with a beautiful soul for the sorrows of humanity and could only sin through impatience to redeem them," and Fidel Castro referred to him as "the direct link between José Martí's Revolutionary Party and the first Communist Party of Cuba."
“It is good to love one’s country, but it is better to love humankind; it is good to love one’s country, but it is better to love liberty and justice,” wrote Baliño, who dedicated his life precisely to fighting for liberty and justice in his homeland.
At a young age, he studied bookkeeping and architecture, but did not complete his studies. In 1868, he entered the San Alejandro Academy of Painting, but due to a serious family situation, he was forced to abandon his studies. After failing to find work in small tobacco factories in Havana, he moved to the United States in late 1868 or 1869 and lived in Key West, Tampa, New York, and New Orleans.
Between 1868 and 1869, he was very active in the revolutionary movement while earning a living as a tobacco worker. In Key West, he served as a member of the Coal Sorters' Guild. In Tampa, he helped found Ibor City, co-founded the first workers' union, the Knights of Labor, and founded two lodges.
He returned to Key West, where he was an editor for the newspaper La Tribuna del Pueblo (The People's Tribune), from which he campaigned for Cuban independence. He then returned to Tampa, where he founded the Union and Fraternity lodge.
He met José Martí in Key West in 1892 when he was 43 years old, and together they signed the founding documents and charter of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. As part of his ongoing work for independence, he accompanied Martí on a tour of the Florida peninsula.
Throughout his years in the United States, he carried out extensive political propaganda work alongside Martí and other prominent figures in the Cuban émigré community, both in the organizations and institutions he founded and those he collaborated with, in the press, and in public speaking. Some of his writings were published in the newspaper Patria, founded by Martí, and he remained true to his roots as a tobacco worker.
After the end of the war against Spain in 1898, he returned to Cuba, where he was forced to earn a living in small tobacco factories, as he was not accepted into the large production centers. During this time, he continued his political activity, especially in 1904 with the organization of the Workers' Party, which, at his urging, became the Socialist Workers' Party, and with his work in La Voz Obrera (The Workers' Voice), the party's official publication.
In 1906, he signed the founding document of the Socialist Party of Cuba, which emerged from the merger of the Socialist Workers' Party and the International Socialist Group, also created with his support.He was a member of the Havana Socialist Group, which he presided over in 1910.
During this period, he contributed to El Socialista (The Socialist), the Group's official publication.In addition to the publications already mentioned, he also contributed to El Productor (The Producer), El Obrero Cigarrero (The Cigar Maker), and Justicia y Lucha de Clases (Justice and Class Struggle), of which he was also the editor. From 1919 onward, he helped reorganize small socialist groups into communist organizations.
In 1922, he became the editor of Espartaco, and a proofreader for the Boletín del Torcedor and the magazine Juventud, edited by Julio Antonio Mella, whom he had met that same year at the printing press where both publications were produced. Together with Mella and other activists, he founded the Communist Party of Cuba in 1925. He died the following year, on June 18, 1926, in Havana. Rather than an obituary, the newspaper "El Boletín del Cigarrero" published an article titled "The Fall of the Oak," which declared in one of its paragraphs: "The workers of Cuba, and especially the communists, have lost one of their best activists."