JULIO ANTONIO MELLA

Julio Antonio Mella (25 March 1903--10 January 1929) was a founder of the "internationalized" Cuban Communist Party. Mella studied law in the University of Havana until he was expelled in 1925 and is considered a hero by the present Cuban government.

After being expelled from the University of Havana, then arrested and released, Mella fled Machado's repression in Cuba. He escaped through Cienfuegos, Cuba, reaching Honduras in 1926, then Guatemala and from there, Mexico.

While in Mexico, he wrote for a number of newspapers: Cuba Libre, El Libertador, Tren Blindado, El Machete and the Boletín del Torcedor (which was published in Havana). He also spent some time in Europe, where he debated against the then-rising populist movement headed by Haya de la Torre and his American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA), and was severely beaten by APRA thugs in Paris.

By the latter 1920s the Cuban Communist Party was seeking to gain power by working within the rules set by the Machado dictatorship. Mella, on the other hand, was working from exile for the overthrow of that dictatorship. Moreover, Mella had come into contact with Trotskyism while in Mexico, as evidenced by his work on the journal Tren Blindado, whose title is an allusion to the armored train from which Leon Trotsky directed the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. These factors led to a falling out between the Communist Party and Mella.

Nonetheless, Mella rejoined the Communist Party in 1929. Two weeks later, he was assassinated. Responsibility for his murder remains a matter of controversy as some believe that he was murdered by agents of the Machado regime while others maintain that he was killed by Communist Party agents due to his "Trotskyism".

WRITINGS AND STATEMENTS

1926: Towards the Creation of Professional Revolutionaries

1928: The Socialist Concept of the University Reform