By Marta Denis Valle*
Historian, journalist and collaborator of Prensa Latina
He was registered with the District Court of the East in Havana under the name Nicanor McFarland, but he would adopt the name Julio Antonio Mella in his public life.
He was the grandson of Ramón Matías Mella y Castillo (1816-1864), a hero of Dominican independence, and Josefa Brea, whose son Antonio Nicanor Mella Brea (1851-1929) settled in Cuba as a wealthy tailor.
Like his brother Cecilio, who was two years his junior, Nicanor Mc Farland (Julio Antonio) was the product of an extramarital union between Antonio Nicanor Mella and the British Cecilia Magdalena Mc Farland y Diez (1882-19?), a native of Hampshire, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The parents met in the United States and from 1902 the couple lived in Havana in an extramarital community.
Although his name is Nicanor, they call him Lamy and he was raised as a bilingual child.
The two children are registered with the East District Court as biological children of the young mother Cecilia McPartland Diez; the father signed as a witness.
To recover from a lung condition, Cecilia travels to New Orleans with her children; They are staying at a boarding house in Liberty Mountain, where their health is improving.
Back in Havana, he hands over custody of the children to Mella and returns to the United States for good.
They continue to live with the father’s legal family; Wife Mercedes Bermudez Ferreira. (1847-1915), changes their names: Nicanor is called Antonio; and Cecilio, Nicasio.
When she died, they were sent to New Orleans with her mother, but they returned some time later to prevent the eldest from being drafted into the US Army, a country embroiled in World War I.
As a child, he learned fluent English from his mother, Cecilia Magdalena McFarland, a strong-tempered woman some 30 years his father’s junior.
STUDIES
At Newton Academy (located on San Lázaro and Águila) he was a student of the Mexican poet, journalist and politician Salvador Díaz Mirón (1853-1928), who spoke to his students about the Mexican Revolution and influenced Mella’s social ideas.
In 1919 he studied various subjects at the Havana Institute, where he was accepted; He traveled to Mexico in 1920 with the idea of doing a military degree, but was turned down because he was a foreigner.
From March 1921 he continued his studies at the Havana Institute and in August applied for a transfer to the Pinar del Río Institute as a liberal education student, where he completed his high school diploma in September 1921.
Since May he has been taking part in rowing competitions under the name Julio Antonio Mella.
In September 1921 he entered the University of Havana as a law and philosophy and literature student, where he excelled in sports and student struggles.
THE LEADER IS BORN
Though very young to already be directing a crowd, Mella is the animator of the student movement that is shaking up the old 1923 structures in favor of university reform and other anti-corruption measures.
She also formed the soul of the University Students’ Union (FEU), which she founded in 1922, the National Student Congress (1923) and the struggles for university reform in the 1920s.
He also founded the José Martí Athenaeum – dedicated to the study of the work of the master – and the José Martí Popular University – for workers – the magazines Alma Mater and Juventud, and the Grupo Renovación for Marxist studies.
In 1924 he founded the Anti-Clerical Federation of Cuba and the newspaper El Libertador; the Ariel Polytechnic Institute and the Venezuela Libre newspaper.
He acquired a national dimension through the founding of the first Cuban Communist Party in 1925, together with Carlos Baliño and a group of revolutionaries, and through his confrontation with the tyranny of Gerardo Machado.
He expressed solidarity with the Soviet Union, opposed the Platt Amendment, and called José Martí to study.
From October 15 to 25, 1923, the First National Student Congress was held, organized and chaired by Mella, with the support of 49 representatives of university students and secondary schools from around the country.
His ties to workers and other progressive forces sparked a wave of protests demanding the return of US-occupied Cuban territory, including its naval base at Guantanamo, and the defense of Cuba’s sovereignty over the Isle of Pines.
Arrested on November 27, 1925, Mella went on an 18-day hunger strike on December 5 that electrified the whole country.
He was accused of planting a dynamite bomb at the Payret theater two months earlier and time passed without any specific charges being brought.
He was released when he was about to die – a day before suffering a heart attack – when the government, under pressure from national and international public opinion, dropped the false charges of violating the Explosives Act.
The young Cuban leader fled to Mexico, where he joined the social struggles. He was a commentator for the newspaper El Machete and took an active part in Mexican and international public life.
He attended the World Congress against Colonial Oppression and Imperialism in February 1927 in Brussels, Belgium. In the same year, the Red International took part in the Congress in Moscow.
He wrote political, historical and social works such as: Cuba, a city that was never free (1924), The Cry of the Martyrs (August 1926) and Glosifying the Thoughts of Martí (December 1926).
He was assassinated in Mexico on January 10, 1929 at the age of 25 by two agents of the dictator Gerardo Machado.
In 1933 his friend Juan Marinello brought Mella’s ashes to Cuba, which for many years had to be protected under the repression of the next “strongman”, Fulgencio Batista. Today they are in a memorial next to the university.
arc/mdv
*The author is a historian, journalist and collaborator with Prensa Latina
MDV