Mayabeque, Cuba: The Day of the Worker of the electricity sector is celebrated today in Cuba, in homage to the date of January 14, 1934, when the then Secretary of the Interior Antonio Guiteras Holmes, ordered the intervention of the misnamed Cuban Electricity Company.
Guiteras Holmes, a prominent revolutionary, was a member of the Government that emerged after the fall of the dictator Gerardo Machado and from his position as Secretary of the Interior issued several laws of a popular nature, including the introduction of the eight-hour workday, the insurance system and retirement for workers, free labor unionization and granted the vote to women in the elections.
But Guiteras’ performance went beyond what was expected and collided with Yankee interests, by decreeing the intervention of the Chaparra and Delicias sugar mills of North American owners, in addition to ordering the reduction of the electricity rate to the Cuban Electricity Company, as well as the American.
The intervention of the electricity consortium on the Island, provoked the ire of the empire, so the United States Ambassador went to the Columbia military camp demanding the Chief of the Army, the then Colonel Fulgencio Batista, to intervene in the matter.
Needless to say, on January 15, 24 hours later, Colonel Fulgencio Batista staged a coup d’état that overthrew President Grau San Martín, of which Antonio Guiteras Holmes was Minister of the Interior, and had to take refuge in hiding to continue the fight until he was assassinated on May 8, 1935 by the Batista army.
The misnamed Cuban Electricity Company had that definitive end in October 1960, when the Revolutionary Government of Cuba decreed its nationalization and it became the property of all the people.
The date of January 14 was chosen to celebrate the sector’s Workers’ Day, in fair homage to Antonio Guiteras’ courageous anti-imperialist gesture of nationalizing the electric octopus on that date, as that Yankee subsidiary was popularly called.
