The darkness of hatred and the evil of a merciless dictatorship blinded the lives of three young men in Santiago de Cuba: Josué País, Floro Vistel Somodevilla, and Salvador Pascual Salcedo, who were fighting to realize their aspirations for freedom for Cuba, subjected to the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista.
Frank País, the Giant of the Underground, a leader of the 26th of July Movement, organized the actions in the former province of Oriente. Among the most active members was his younger brother Josué, who had also founded the Eastern Revolutionary Action (ARO) to fight against Batista’s tyranny.
On December 7, 1953, at just 15 years old, he threw a stone at a lamp under which a group of police officers were suppressing a Santiago de Cuba student demonstration in honor of Antonio Maceo.
In mid-1954, he was caught painting a wall with slogans such as “Down with Batista!” For which he was sentenced to one year of house arrest as a minor, just 16 years old.
His short but intense life is impressive. He is seen at every protest, suffering imprisonment, but nothing stops him from smuggling weapons, sabotage, or organizational tasks, which he carried out with audacity and prepared him for greater endeavors, such as the armed uprising of November 30, 1956, in support of the landing of the yacht Granma.
For the uprising, Frank had assigned Josué to prepare the escape of the political prisoners confined in Boniato prison, but later entrusted him with the delicate task of firing a mortar from the Secondary Education Institute toward the Moncada barracks, a mission that was thwarted when he was arrested along with the prominent fighter Léster Rodríguez as they tried to reach the student center.
Included among those arrested in the uprising and the landing of the Granma in Case 67 of 1956, “brought against 226 people accused of having taken part in the insurrection led by Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz,” he was imprisoned in the Boniato prison until the day of his trial, where, alongside Frank, he carried out intense activities aimed at continuing the struggle.
On Sunday, June 30, 1957, the regime’s politicians staged a rally in support of Batista in Céspedes Park, aiming to demonstrate to the nation “the absolute calm” reigning in Oriente. They adopted numerous repressive measures to guarantee their objectives, when in reality the entire region was an unstoppable revolutionary hotbed.
The M-26-7 leadership prepared joint actions to sabotage the rally. Josué is believed to be leading one of the armed groups that would fire shots in the air to disperse the rally. Josué and Floro are hiding in a house at 313 General Banderas Street and listening attentively to the radio.
The Movement manages to intercept the rally line by telephone and rallies the people to fight. Salvador Pascual Salcedo is the other member of the group, and together with Floro, they occupy a rental car, which is immediately surrounded and pursued.
A patrol car following behind identifies the Chevrolet and initiates a chase. There are exchanges of fire, and one of the police bullets pierces a rear tire, and they are immediately ambushed between two sets of fire.
More than twenty soldiers patrolling the area soon join in.
All of them unload their weapons in a practically homicidal manner at the three combatants. Floro and Salvador were shot dead before they could leave the vehicle, while Josué, pistol in hand, abandoned it in a combative attitude.
The assassins turned their weapons on him and, wounding him, managed to knock him to the pavement. His movements indicated that he was still alive when Lieutenant Colonel José María Salas Cañizares arrived. “Massacre,” as the people of Santiago nicknamed him, ordered the wounded man’s body to be taken to the Emergency Hospital, but not before calling his thugs aside and ordering them to kill him on the way.
Thus, Josué, Floro, and Salvador heroically offered their lives. The burial of the revolutionaries, their bodies covered by flags of the 26th of July Movement, became a demonstration of mourning and defiance of the regime.
Sixty-eight years have passed since the criminal murder, but these heroes of the Homeland live on in the hearts of their people, a people who will eternally honor and safeguard the freedom we have today and for which they gave their lives.
