Camilo Cienfuegos Gorriarán was one of the most paradigmatic personalities of the Cuban Revolution along with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Raúl Castro and Juan Almeida.
He is considered one of the founders of the Rebel Army and of its main leaders in the bloody section of the Revolution against the Batista dictatorship.
Known as El Comandante del Pueblo, El Señor de la Vanguardia, Héroe de Yaguajay or El Héroe del Sombrero Alón, he was an outstanding revolutionary of humble extraction and broad popular ancestry due to his jovial character and natural detachment.
He completed his first studies at Public School No. 20, in San Francisco de Paula, and finished elementary school at Public School No. 105 Félix E. Alpízar.
In 1948 he became involved in the political struggle participating in popular protests against the increase in the fare of urban buses, and on March 10, 1952, with a group of young people, he went to the University in search of arms to resist the dictatorship, after the coup d’etat of Fulgencio Batista.
He was wounded by a firearm during a demonstration in honor of the Cuban independence hero Antonio Maceo on December 14, 1955.
He became the first leader of the movement that carried the combat beyond the Sierra Maestra, to the Llanos del Cauto, in March 1958.
After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Cienfuegos was part of the high command of the Revolutionary Army as its supreme chief. He fought in the counter-revolutionary uprisings and also participated in the Agrarian Reform.
In his last speech, given on October 26, 1959 in front of the Presidential Palace in Havana, Cienfuegos underlined his loyalty to the revolutionary government and to Fidel Castro.
Camilo Cienfuegos died on October 28, 1959 in an aviation accident due to bad weather while returning from Camagüey to Havana aboard his Cessna 310 plane, all of Cuba mobilized in his search for several days in one of the most important events moving moments of the first years of the Cuban Revolution.
Every year, on October 28, he is paid tribute in all the towns and cities of Cuba by throwing flower offerings to the sea and rivers and in the province of Sancti Spíritus, where Camilo led his best-known battle, is the Mausoleum of the “Frente Norte de Las Villas”, where the remains of most of the guerrillas of the column led by him rest and a statue is raised in his honor.