Cuba honors Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida

HAVANA, Cuba, Feb 17 (ACN) Cuban authorities evoked today the life and work of Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida Bosque, on the 96th anniversary of his birth.

Miguel Diaz-Canel, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and President of the Republic, highlighted on Twitter Almeida's career as a fighter in the Rebel Army, his artistic work, as well as the respect and affection of the people, which he always deserved.

Cuba remembers him as the humble man he always was, kind-hearted, heroic, patriotic. This is how we remember you, Comandante, wrote Prime Minister Manuel Marrero on the same social network.

The Secretary of Organization of the Central Committee of the PCC, Roberto Morales Ojeda, recalled a fragment of a text of the historic leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, days after the death of the Commander of the Revolution: "Let's not say that Almeida has died! He lives today more than ever!".

Salvador Valdes Mesa, Vice President of the Republic, evoked the well-known phrase of the combatant: "Nobody surrenders here...! which became an emblem of the resistance capacity of Cubans.

Juan Almeida Bosque (February 17, 1927 - September 11, 2009) exclaimed those words in 1956, before the enemy's call to surrender, after the first armed confrontation of the emerging Rebel Army in Alegria de Pio, where the inexperienced combatants were almost massacred.

Previously, Almeida had participated in the assault on the Moncada Garrison (July 26, 1953), for which he was imprisoned, and after his exile in Mexico, he sailed on the Granma yacht to eastern Cuba together with 81 other expeditionaries, to begin the guerrilla war against the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista.

During that period, he earned the rank of Commander and founded and led the 3rd Mario Muñoz Front, in which, in addition to the 6,000 square kilometers he covered, he won the love of the people.

After the triumph of the Revolution (1959) he held numerous responsibilities as a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the PCC since its founding in 1965, vice president of the Council of State and president of the Combatants Association.

In addition to his revolutionary work, he also had a prolific musical and literary work, including more than 300 musical pieces and nine books.