It was the night of January 10, 1929, 97 years ago. The young Cuban student leader and anti-imperialist, Julio Antonio Mella McPartland, was walking down a street in Mexico City with his companion, Tina Modotti, when his assassins shot him dead, from behind, just as he had predicted.
“I have absolutely no fear of death; the only thing I fear is that they are going to kill me from behind,” Mella declared before leaving Cuba for exile, anticipating what the Cuban dictator, Gerardo Machado, would order his henchmen to do in January 1929 to end his prolific life.
The “donkey with claws,” as the young Rubén Martínez Villena would later describe Machado, would make good on his threat when, upon demanding the release of Mella, imprisoned on terrorist charges, the dictator furiously replied in front of witnesses: “You’re right, young man. I don’t know what communism, anarchism, or socialism is. But I’m not going to be fooled by students, workers, veterans, patriots, or even Mella. And I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!”
Two months before his 26th birthday (March 25, 1903, Havana – January 10, 1929, Mexico City), Mella would join the ranks of the eternal heroes of the nation, with a revolutionary legacy so impressive that it is difficult to imagine how he could have accomplished so much and organized so many popular sectors in Cuba and Latin America in his short life.
His anti-imperialist message remains fully relevant today, as he said: “The time is for struggle, for ardent struggle; whoever does not take up arms and launch into combat, using petty slights as a pretext, can be called a traitor or a coward. Tomorrow we can discuss, today the only honorable thing is to fight.”
His first journalistic works appeared in the university magazine Alma Máter (1922-1923), which he founded and managed. He was one of the founders of the Federation of University Students (FEU) on December 20, 1922, when he was 19 years old. In January 1923, he led the student struggle for university reform and became president of the FEU. In October of that year, he organized and led the First National Congress of Students, and in November, he created the José Martí Popular University, with the purpose of providing political and academic instruction to workers and linking the University with the needs of the oppressed.
Mella combined his purely academic interest in university reform with a political concern for the modernization of society, seeking to expand democracy and increase student participation in national life. He articulated the social function of the University of Havana thus: “The highest center of culture should not and cannot be a mere degree factory. A Latin American university is not a business school where one goes only to find a way to earn a living: the modern university must directly influence social life, point the way to progress, bring about that progress among individuals through action, and, through its professors, unravel the mysteries of science and expose them to human understanding.”
He was the director and editor of the magazine Juventud (1923-1925), founder of the Anticlerical League (1924), and founder of the Cuban section of the Anti-Imperialist League of Cuba, along with Carlos Baliño and with the combative presence of Rubén Martínez Villena. The League, inspired by the Communist International, would be a fundamental instrument for the creative application of Leninist ideas in colonial and dependent countries. Julio Antonio would become the organization's leading figure throughout Latin America. That same year, he joined the Communist Group of Havana and from there carried out very active work among the proletariat.
On June 16, 1925, at the age of 22, he founded the Communist Party of Cuba with Carlos Baliño, becoming its first organizing secretary. In 1926, he was expelled from the University of Havana for his revolutionary and rebellious actions and was also arrested by the authorities. In prison, he declared an indefinite hunger strike. The Pro-Freedom Committee of Mella launched a campaign for his release, and national and international pressure mounted. He was released on December 23 of that same year and then embarked for Honduras.
Julio Antonio Mella finally went into exile in Mexico and joined the continental and international revolutionary movement, of which he was appointed general secretary. From this leading position, he established contact with revolutionaries and democrats throughout the region and promoted preparatory activities for an international event. In February 1927, he attended the World Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism, held in Brussels, where he connected with revolutionaries and anti-colonial activists from 37 countries and 137 progressive organizations worldwide.
In 1928, in Mexico, he met the photographer and revolutionary activist.