Juan Almeida, the man who never surrendered

Juan Almeida Bosque not only won the love and remembrance of the Cuban people due to his social-politic works. And it is that the Commandant of the Revolution left a print equally notable and value in the culture and the music of Cuba, with a dozen of published books and more than three hundred compositions which remain alive in the popular appraisal.

Since he was a child the fighter grew up under the examples of ethics and moral of his humble family, in Los Pinos his native neighborhood of Havana, he was developing a humanist conscience, which, definitively, was consolidated when beginning to participate in the fight initiated in answer to the coup d’état on March 10th of 1952.

In these circumstances, the young Juan Almeida met Fidel, to whom he followed later in the assault to the Moncada barracks on July 26th of 1953. Equally, he was one of the condemned to prison, with a penalty of 10 years; until that, after several years of imprisonment in the Model Prison, and thanks to the popular pressing, in 1955 he was amnestied together with his fellows.

Once free, after the amnesty of May 15th of 1955, Almeida continued his conspiratorial activities until he went to the exile in Mexico, to participate in the trainings and preparative of the expedition of the Granma yacht, which left Mexico on November 25th of 1956, and touched the Cuban coasts on December 2nd with 82 expeditionary whipped by tiredness and fatigue.

Alegría de Pío became a fatal reception of fire for the expeditionary fighters. In the middle of that encounter that seemed terrible, one of the most memorable passages of the Cuban history was produced.

The triumph of January of 1959 opened new responsibilities for the Commandant Juan Almeida Bosque, which he would accomplish with equal discipline and dedication, since chief of the Motorized Direction of the M-26-7 until chief of the Aerial Force of the Rebel Army and chief of the Army, in substitution of the Commandant Camilo Cienfuegos, after his physical disappearance.

Other tasks involved his efforts: the fight against bandits, First Vice minister and chief of the Direction of Services of the Major General State of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, as vocal of the Revolutionary Tribunal presided by the commandant Augusto Martínez Sánchez who was in charge of judging in summary judgment, to the participants in the invasion of Cochinos Bay on April 17th of 1961; as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and of the Political Bureau in October of 1965; as well as a deputy to the National Assembly of the Popular Power since the first legislature and Vice-president of the State Council of Cuba.

His legacy goes beyond the revolutionary fight because he dabbled in the art as writer and as a musical composer. Also he composed more than three hundred songs, from which several record productions have been made; two of his more popular songs are “La Lupe” and “Dame un traguito”.

His example remains in the Cuban revolutionaries and his print; in the social and humanistic labor that fomented all his life; as well as in his family and his people that, for sure, will never forget the man who in the middle of the most terrible adversity recovered himself and gave courage to men who at that exact moment, almost without knowing it, they would became in the future of the Revolution.