Mella, Julio Antonio

(1903–1929)

   A significant figure in the development of Cuban revolutionary socialism, Mella was above all a political activist. In 1922 he organized the Cuban Federation of University Students and then moved on to help form the José Marti Popular University (named after the Cuban revolutionary nationalist), which integrated students, workers and professors. The university also took up the cause of Cuban workers and their appalling working conditions and protested against United States imperialism, before the government closed it down. Mella then founded an Anti- Clerical League, considering the church to be reactionary and an obstacle to socialism and scientific thinking. He also helped start the Cuban section of the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas, which campaigned against the undemocratic regimes in the region and the sway international capital held over them. He embraced Vladimir Ilich Lenin’s theory of imperialism, and in 1925 he helped organize the Constitutional Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. He was assassinated in Mexico in 1929 by agents of the Cuban government.