Julio Antonio Mella

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Julio Antonio Mella (1929)

Julio Antonio Mella (originally Nicanor MacPartland y Diez) (born March 25, 1903 in Havana , Cuba , † January 10, 1929 in Mexico ) was a Cuban student leader and co-founder of the Communist Party of Cuba .

Life

Julio Antonio Mella was born out of wedlock to the wealthy Dominican textile merchant Nicanor Mella and Cecilia McPartland, who came from a humble background and immigrated to the USA from her native Ireland, who had followed Nicanor Mella from New Orleans to Havana. A few years later, McPartland went back to the USA and left their two sons with their father, who officially recognized them as his sons under new first and last names and handed them over to his wife's care. After the death of their stepmother, the brothers Julio Antonio (originally Nicanor) and Nicasio (originally Cecilio) followed their mother to the USA around 1915 and returned to Cuba in 1920.

From 1921 Julio Antonio Mella studied at the Faculties of Law, Philosophy and Literature at the University of Havana . In 1923 he was elected chairman of the Cuban student association, FEU , which he founded . He had previously made a name for himself as the author of articles that had appeared in the student magazine Alma Mater , for which he was responsible, since 1922 . The People's University “ José Martí ” was founded under his leadership . In 1924 he became a member of the Havana Communist Group . Shortly afterwards he founded the “Anti-Clerical Association” and led the protest movement against the visit of the ship Italia from fascist Italy . In 1925 he became a co-founder of the Anti-Imperialist League of Cuba. In August 1925 he founded the Communist Party of Cuba with Carlos Baliño and others. In 1926 he was forcibly de-registered from the University of Havana.

On November 27, 1925, he was arrested along with various workers by the police of the dictator Gerardo Machado and charged with having committed "terrorist acts". Against the will of the Communist Party, he went on a hunger strike , whereupon many leftists, but also bourgeois intellectuals, got involved with him. After his release on December 23, he was expelled from the Communist Party for disobedience. Instead of following a new summons to the police, he then fled the death threats of the Machado dictatorship via Honduras to Mexico . In the years of exile he campaigned against the hegemony of the USA in Latin America , for example by supporting Sandino in Nicaragua , building a left-wing union headquarters in Mexico and organizing an alliance of Cuban exiles with the aim of setting up an armed group for a landing company in Cuba . He was active as a journalist and traveled to congresses in Brussels, Moscow and New York. In 1929 he was shot dead in the street by agents of Machado.

The authorities initially portrayed his murder as an act of jealousy by his partner, the Italian photographer Tina Modotti , who Mella had met four months earlier and who subsequently had to leave Mexico as an unwanted foreigner. The actual assassins were not arrested until two years later.

Mella is still celebrated today by the official Cuban government propaganda as an important national hero, his likeness can be found next to Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos on the emblem of the communist youth association of Cuba's UJC . In the capital Havana, among other things, a large theater is named after him, as well as the small town formerly called Miranda and the surrounding district ( municipality ) with 36,000 inhabitants in the north of the province of Santiago de Cuba as well as a sugar factory located there, several smaller settlements throughout the country , as well as a sports stadium in Las Tunas . Opposite the flight of steps leading to the campus of the University of Havana is a square named after him with a mausoleum in his honor, a large Mella monument has been a few kilometers away on the premises of the Universidad de las Ciencias Informáticas since 2005 . His portrait is depicted on the 1000 CUP banknote.

literature

  • Fabio Grobart: A life for the revolution. Julio Antonio Mella . In: Contributions to the history of the labor movement . 22nd year Berlin 1980, No. 5, pp. 738-745, ISSN  0005-8068
  • Christine Hatzky : Julio Antonio Mella. (1903-1929). A biography (= Forum Ibero-Americanum. Acta Coloniensia. Vol. 2). Vervuert, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-86527-135-9 (also: Hannover, Univ., Diss., 2003).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cecilia McPartland in: Dictionary of Irish Latin American Biography (English)
  2. ↑ Tomás Borge Martinez: Marginal Notes on the Propaganda of the FSLN , in: Communicating in popular Nicaragua, edited by Armand Mattelart, pp. 46–54, New York, 1986, p. 53.
  3. ↑ Mausoleo de Julio Antonio Mella , on the website of the Havana Monument Authority, accessed on August 20, 2012 (Spanish)
personal data
SURNAME Mella, Julio Antonio
ALTERNATIVE NAMES McPortland y Diez, Nicanor (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban politician, co-founder of the Communist Party of Cuba
DATE OF BIRTH March 25, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Havana
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 1929
Place of death Mexico