Frank País

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Frank Isaac País García (born December 7, 1934 in Santiago de Cuba , Cuba ; † July 30, 1957 ibid) was one of the most important Cuban revolutionaries in the local underground.

Life

Family, education and work

Frank País was born as the eldest son of the couple, Francisco País Pesqueira (1862–1939) and Rosario García Calviño (1899–1977), who immigrated from Spain. His father, a Baptist pastor, died in October 1939 at the age of 77 when Frank and his two younger brothers Agustín (* 1936) and Josué (1937–1957) were still small children. The surviving family then lived in difficult economic conditions. País completed training as a primary school teacher at the Escuela Normal para Maestros de Oriente in Santiago from 1949 to 1953, and then studied for a year at the Faculty of Education at the Universidad de Oriente . He gave evening courses in adult education during his training and, after graduating, taught as a primary school teacher at the Baptist private school in El Salvador in his hometown. In 1956 he gave up his professional activity to devote himself entirely to the resistance struggle.

Resistance to the dictatorship

At the time of the Fulgencio Batista coup in March 1952, País was student spokesman at the Escuela Normal in the third of four years of training. In collaboration with student representatives from other educational institutions in Santiago, País first organized street demonstrations against the dictatorship. It was not until 1953 that he decided to take the path of armed resistance and founded the Decisión Guiteras group, limited to Santiago . País was a member of other organizations that fought against the Batista regime: so u. a. in Movimiento Nacional Revolucionario (MNR), Acción Revolucionaria Oriental (ARO), and Acción Nacional Revolucionaria (ANR). Founder and chief national in Cuba the group action and sabotage of the 26th of July Movement , and coordinator of urban resistance groups in the eastern part of the island and delegate to the National Directorate of the July 26 Movement in Santiago de Cuba.

After copying and distributing his Asesinato ("Murder") letter of protest in response to the murders of some of the armed attackers at Moncada barracks on July 26, 1953 , he was arrested for the first time by the police and spent the second half of August in custody.

Frank País headed a. a. the preparations for the uprising of November 30, 1956 in Santiago de Cuba, which was intended to support the landing of the revolutionaries on the yacht Granma in Cuba. Also involved in the action were u. a. Armando Hart and Celia Sánchez . He had previously traveled to Mexico in August and again in October 1956 to consult with Castro. In March 1957, País was arrested and brought to justice along with 150 other defendants, including 22 members of the Granma expedition, for armed activities directed against the government. In a sensational verdict, the revolutionaries were acquitted in May by presiding judge Manuel Urrutia for acting within their constitutionally guaranteed right to resist Batista's illegal takeover.

País put together the first reinforcement contingent of 50 fighters, who rose to the less than twenty remaining rebels of the Granma occupation in the Sierra Maestra by January 6, 1957 . On his initiative there was a Catholic as well as a Baptist pastor among the guerrillas. During his underground activity in the July 26th Movement, he went by the aliases Salvador, David and Cristian.

Memorial plaques and restored bullet hole at the place of his shooting in Santiago

Frank País spent the last days of his life hiding from the police, who were intensely looking for him, in a secret quarter in downtown Santiago, of which only four people were aware. There, on July 30, 1957, he was targeted by a large number of security forces from various units, arrested and murdered together with his comrade Raúl Pujol in the street Callejón del Muro in his native city. He had previously been identified by Luis Mariano Randich, a former fellow student from the National College for Teacher Education who was executed in July 1959 by the victorious revolutionaries. According to his own account, the campaigner Vilma Espín called him about ten minutes before País' arrest. Shortly after she called, Lieutenant Colonel José María Salas Cañizares, in charge of the search for País, gave the order to move the block in question. It is believed that the security forces in Santiago at the time (as well as the underground fighters) intercepted all private phone calls.

Frank País' funeral turned into a political demonstration against the regime. A month earlier, his brother Josué had died after a failed commando operation together with two other combatants in an exchange of fire with government security forces. Armando Hart succeeded him as the national coordinator of the July 26th Movement. Frank País' fiancée, América Domitro (1935–1971), continued to take part in the fight against Batista after his death, initially in the underground and from November 1958 in the rebel troops. At the mediation of the Spanish and the Costa Rican embassies, Agustín, the last survivor of the three País brothers, who was also in mortal danger, was initially granted the transfer by plane from Santiago to Havana a week after Frank's death before he went into exile in was able to leave the United States, where he still lives today.

His portrait adorns the 200 CUP banknote. Also, is Holguín airport named after him.

literature

  • José Álvarez: Frank Pais: Architect of Cuba's Betrayed Revolution. Universal Publishers, 2009 (English)
  • Ramón Bonachea and Marta San Martín: The Cuban Insurrection 1952–1959. Transaction, New Brunswick 1974 (English)
  • Carlos Franqui: Diary of the Cuban Revolution. Viking Press, New York 1980 (English)
  • Jorge Ibarra: Frank País y los orígenes del movimiento revolucionario en Santiago de Cuba in: Memorias de la Revolución. Pp. 92-114, edited by Enrique Oltuski et al. a., Imagen Contemporánea, Havanna 2007, (Spanish, available online )
  • Renaldo Infante Urivazo: Frank País: leyenda sin mitos. Ciencias Sociales, Havanna 2011, ISBN 978-959-06-1302-9 (Spanish)
  • José Lupiáñez Reinlein: El Movimiento Estudiantil en Santiago de Cuba 1952–1953. Ciencias Sociales, Havana 1985 (Spanish)
  • Juan Antonio Monroy: Frank País: Un líder evangélico en la Revolución Cubana. CLIE, Terrassa 2003 (Spanish)
  • Julia E. Sweig: Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2002 (English)

documentary

  • Enrique Pineda Barnet: David. (Cuba, 1967) 135 minutes

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Monroy: Frank País (PDF), p. 19
  2. ↑ Jorge Ibarra: Frank País y los orígenes del movimiento revolucionario en Santiago de Cuba, pp. 96–99
  3. ↑ Annia Domínguez Bidet: Frank, el trazo inédito, ( Memento from September 3, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) in: Iré a Santiago from July 16, 2008, accessed on August 27, 2014 (Spanish)
  4. ↑ Monroy: Frank País (PDF), p. 71
  5. ^ Sweig: Inside the Cuban Revolution, p. 12
  6. ↑ Bonachea / San Martín: The Cuban Insurrection, p. 153
  7. ↑ Pedro Antonio García: Frank significa libertad , in: Bohemia of July 20, 2007, accessed on September 7, 2013 (Spanish)
  8. ↑ Bonachea / San Martín: The Cuban Insurrection, p. 146
  9. ^ Franqui: Diary, p. 214
  10. ^ Franqui: Diary, pp. 213f
  11. ↑ Bonachea / San Martín: The Cuban Insurrection, pp. 377f
  12. ↑ Monroy: Frank País (PDF), p. 69
personal data
SURNAME País, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES País García, Frank Isaac (full name); David (alias); Carlos (alias)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban underground revolutionary
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Santiago de Cuba , Cuba
DATE OF DEATH July 30, 1957
Place of death Santiago de Cuba