Radio Havana Cuba | Frank Country: the hero who was the strength of the people (+ Photos)

By Martha Gómez Ferrals

Frank País García was shot dead by the henchmen of Batista, at the age of 22, with his fighting partner Raúl Pujol, in the now historic Callejón del Muro of his native Santiago de Cuba, July 30, 1957.

His workmates, friends of his childhood and young man, felt with him that he was encouraged by the sacred fire of the struggle and his convictions. But this impact also receives those who see their pictures today. All the purity and nobility of the world was reflected in his deep look.

His brother Joshua was killed on June 30, 1957, and he barely survived for a month. Both were trained in a humble home, a lover of values ​​and education, patriotic feelings. This made them faithful to the historic moment when they had to live and fully integrate, at the cost of their lives, the July 26 Movement.

When they died, they were an essential and memorable part of the history of the heroic Santiago de Cuba. land that gave the homeland a plethora of founders and heroes of the nation and important events in which his people were protagonists.

The career of Raúl Pujol Arencibia was very heroic, born December 2, 1918 in Palma Soriano. After the badault on the Moncada barracks on July 26, 1953, Raúl helped several survivors protect themselves and return to Havana.

Engaged in revolutionary activities since 1954, he received weapons on deposit for which he was responsible. . He participated in the organization of Santiago's civic resistance and became a link between all the forces that opposed the dictatorship.

His house also became a meeting center for the July 26 movement several times.

of the preparation of the necessary tools and the acquisition of equipment and supplies for the creation of the III Frente Guerrillero Oriental. His small business, a hardware store, was essential for the agitation of the revolutionaries. This has prompted him to be located, reserved and savagely persecuted for tyranny.

On July 30, 1957, Frank was hiding in the house of Pujol, but because of a denunciation, the repressive forces began to search the neighborhood.

Pujol was not there, but he warned that he had moved to his home and was in agreement with his partner to leave her. It was late because, on leaving, they were discovered and the monstrous events that ended in the vile badbadination of both occurred. Santiago and all Cuba vibrated with horror and indignation, which fortified the fighting force of the people

The burial of Frank or David, in hiding, was the most combative manifestation and the more painful of the city, who turned to the streets, defying the repression. They accompanied the stoic mother, Doña Rosario and her beautiful and inconsolable girlfriend, America Domitro. They accompanied them in their pain and swore to continue the fight.

"There are dead people who, although dead, are not in their graves," wrote the poet Manuel Navarro Luna at the time. Frank País García was born on December 7, 1934 in Santiago de Cuba. His life, we said, was very short and yet he did so much: he gave himself so fully to the cause of freedom, radiated so much inner beauty, with his courage and daring proven , that he won the love of his compatriots forever. 19659004] From his birth seemed to have the light this child who has become a serious and responsible young man, endowed with principles and values ​​firm, but also cheerful and affable like the greatest, lover of music and youth, in love with life and its loves.

In his modest house, founded by emigrant parents of Galician origin (Marín, Pontevedra), death soon took over the parent, but his mother, Doña Rosario, was the horcón that continued with the support and education of their children. It was the moral forge that they always had.

Frank had to leave architecture studies, but he entered the Normal Teacher School in the East to find in this profession a vocation that matched his altruistic and giving personality, in his pbadion to surrender. to just and noble causes. In this institution, he graduated on July 6, 1953.

He joined the Bloc Normaliste des Etudiants (BREN) and from there he formed the Local Federation of Secondary Education Centers, which is added to the Student Revolutionary Directory

. In 1952, after the March 10th coup, Fulgencio Batista, who was later in power, went to the Moncada barracks to offer to fight with arms in defense of the expelled government

. July 26 Movement of Fidel Castro, recently amnestied, Frank País himself asks and obtains the membership of the ANR at M-26-7. He was first among the leaders of the Movement in the former province of Oriente and in 1956 he was promoted to head of the M-26-7's action and sabotage throughout the country. .

He took great pains in the uprising of the heroic Santiago de Cuba on November 30, 1956, in support of the landing of the yacht Granma, frustrated by climate imponderables, which delayed the arrival of the ship on Cuban lands in his dangerous trip from Mexico. As is known, his imprint is indelibly present in the history of Cuba

(from the ACN)