«I am the Master», a phrase that transcends every November 26th.

I am the teacher! was the phrase expressed with dignity and courage by the young brigadista Manuel Ascunce Domenech before the counterrevolutionaries who showed up at the home of the humble peasant Pedro Lantigua on the night of November the 26th, 1961 to carry out one of the most repugnant crimes committed by the bands of rebels in Cuba.

The young literacy teacher and his student confronted the bloodthirsty men who cowardly attacked them, tortured them savagely and then hanged them from a tree in the area of Limones Cantero, near the Palmarito farm, in the heart of the Escambray, belonging to the territory of Sancti Spíritus.

His executioners were members of Julio Emilio Carretero’s gang, among them were Pedro Gonzalez and Braulio Amador Quesada, who was the main executioner and was executed three months after the horrendous event.

According to eyewitnesses, the bandits did not care about the age of the young teacher. His mere 16 years did not prevent a brutal death from cutting short his short life. Pedro Lantigua knew that he was his main protector in the absence of his real family and was with him until his last breath.

The blows, insults, punches and tortures were not enough. Their murderers, who responded to the interests of the enemies of the young Revolution, decided to hang them with barbed wire. For all the guajiros of the region it would be a lesson and they would put an end to the successful Literacy Campaign, even if it was at the cost of the lives of innocent people.

The first to discover the hanging corpses showed that the hatred of the rebels did not admit contemplation, but that double crime, far from provoking fear or renunciation of the noble cause of bringing education to the mountains, unleashed popular indignation and thousands of young people joined the Campaign, valued as the first great cultural event in Cuba.

Thanks to the educational epic, more than 700 thousand Cubans learned to read and write in a few months, which allowed this country to reduce its illiteracy rate from 23.6 to 3.9 percent, while only the elderly or those with disabling health conditions remained illiterate.

The new generations of teachers throughout the country will always remember the example of the adolescent literacy teacher, who did not hesitate for an instant to confront the bandits who savagely murdered him when he was just beginning to live.

Written by Yovana Baró Álvarez.