Julio Antonio Mella, activist, communist revolutionary. (Havana)
Julio Antonio Mella (25 March 1903 – 10 January 1929) was a founder of the “internationalized” Cuban Communist Party.
Mella was born Nicanor McPartland in Havana in 1903. His father was Nicanor Mella Breá (1851–1929), a tailor and son of one of the heroes of the Dominican Republican war of independence, Ramón Matías Mella Castillo. Mella’s mother was an Irish woman named Cecilia McPartland, Cecilia was not the wife of Nicanor senior. Mella initially took his name from his father and as a child travelled with his younger brother Cecilio to New Orleans while his mother convalesced from lung troubles. The boys returned to Cuba to live with his father’s wife Mercedes Bermúdez Ferreira. Mella changed his name from Nicanor to Antonio and his younger brother became Nicasio Mella.
Mella studied law in the University of Havana until he was expelled in 1925 and is considered a hero by the present Cuban government. Some Cubans view him as a victim of the Stalin-Trotsky struggle. His biography varies with the source consulted.
Mella attended the University of Havana where his radicalism was further enhanced through his leadership. Students forcibly occupied Havana University and sought power through demands for changes including: the modernization of textbooks, autonomy for the university, free education for all, and more unusually, to be head of the university for one day. Mella was soon involved in the struggle against future Cuban president Gerardo Machado, and organized the formal founding of the Moscow directed Partido Comunista de Cuba. At this time he was linked to women radicals Rosario Guillaume (Charito), and Sarah Pascual. He was expelled from the University after being arrested and accused of a bomb plot.After being released in late 1925, he eventually fled to Central America in the earlier portion of 1926.
Mella used the pseudonyms Cuauhtémoc Zapata, Kim (El Machete), y Lord McPartland in his writing. 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. In Mexico, he wrote for a number of newspapers: Cuba Libre, El Libertador, Tren Blindado (“The Armored Train”, a Trotskyist symbol, El Machete and the Boletín del Torcedor (which is published in Havana).
Death.
At the time of his death he was a Cuban marxist revolutionary in Mexico trying to organize the overthrow of the Cuban government of General Gerardo Machado. This cause was an embarrassment to the Cuban Communist Party which was trying to gain power by establishing a modus vivendi with Machado. What further disturbed the Cuban communists was that they felt he had fallen under Leon Trotsky’s influence. Mella was assassinated on January 10, 1929, while walking home late at night with photographer Tina Modotti.
TINA MODOTTI
The Mexican government tried to implicate Modotti in the murder, even releasing nude photographs of her by Edward Weston to try and generate public opinion against her. Muralist Diego Rivera played a very active role in defending her and exposing the Mexican government’s crude attempt to frame her, for this crime that the Mexican authorities felt correctly or incorrectly to have involved her. It is unclear whether Mella was murdered by the dictatorial Cuban government, if his death had been brought about by Trotsky-Stalin Communist Party feuding, or by combination of these mutual interests. It is widely speculated that he died by the notoriously bloody hand of Vittorio Vidale.
In Caimito a small town in Artemisa Province, there is a camp called Campamento Internacional Julio Antonio Mella honoring him. The town of Mella, in Santiago de Cuba Province, was named after him.
Agencies/Various/InternetPhotos/YouTube/TheCubanHistory.com
The Cuban History, Hollywood.
Arnoldo Varona, Editor.