Antonio Guiteras was the purest spirit of the revolutionary movement in Cuba, this is how specialists defined the outstanding young man in the fight against the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado and whose birthday anniversary evokes anti-imperialist ideas today, Prensa Latina publishes.
Born on November 22, 1906 in the city of Philadelphia, United States, he was the second son of the Cuban Calixto Guiteras Gener, and the American Marie Theresse Holmes Walsh.
According to documentary sources, due to his father’s illness problems, the family decided to travel to the Island in 1913 and settle in Matanzas and later in Pinar del Río, current provinces located in the west of the country; he after would study Pharmacy at the University of Havana.
It was in that academic headquarters where, in 1927, Guiteras supported the founding of the University Student Directory, which was against the extension in power of Machado (1925-1933), and later would be part of an action group that carried out actions against the dictator from the eastern part of the country.
In 1932 he created Unión Revolucionaria (UR), an insurrectionary organization with the aim of grouping together the forces that were fighting in the East against the regime.
From UR, the young man launched the Manifesto to the Cuban people, which presented a program focused on the unity of all the forces, beyond the different political tendencies, for the triumph of a true Revolution, in which the armed struggle was the more practical way to overthrow the dictatorship.
Guiteras rejected the negotiation of the United States ambassador in Cuba, Benjamin Sumner Welles, who aspired to an understanding between the parties of the Government and the bourgeois opposition with a view to neutralizing the action of the people against the regime.
When he received the news of Machado’s flight on August 12, 1933, he delivered a speech against Washington’s interference on the island and called for the consolidation of the Revolution.
After the overthrow came the brief government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes imposed by the American ambassador, defenestrated with a coup led by the then sergeant Fulgencio Batista on September 4, 1933, according to an article by the journalist Ciro Bianchi.
The Revolution seemed to have come to power and Ramón Grau San Martín presided over the so-called Government of the Hundred Days, which had its Secretary (Minister) of the Interior in Guiteras.
The administration took a group of popular and anti-imperialist measures that won the support of the people, such as the establishment of the eight-hour working day, and the reduction of electricity rates.
However, the government was not recognized by the United States at a time when it wanted to maintain its hegemony over the destiny of Cuba, and Washington finally supported Fulgencio Batista (now head of the Army), to force the resignation of Grau.
The ex-minister in hiding founded the revolutionary organization Joven Cuba, to combat the prevailing regime through armed struggle and, once power was taken, to structure the Cuban State according to the postulates of socialism.
After the failure of a strike in March 1935, Antonio Guiteras understood that to unleash the popular insurrection it was necessary to create a guerrilla focus in the eastern mountains, and for this he planned a trip to Mexico, where he planned to organize an expedition.
However, the denouncement of officers of the Navy in whom he had trusted, caused a bullet to reach the heart of the young man in the old fort known as El Morrillo, in Matanzas, on May 8, 1935.
They say that the Venezuelan internationalist Carlos Aponte, who was next to him, told Guiteras: “Compay, before we surrender, we die.” And he replied: “We die.”
“Thus the steepest figure, the best tempered spirit, the most indomitable will, the most energetic arm and the purest spirit of the national revolutionary movement were lost,” wrote Raúl Roa, who would be Cuban Foreign Minister, about him.