René Fraga Moreno: Teaching and Revolution.

Since that fateful July 24th, 1957, when Batista’s tyranny snatched from the Cuban Revolution the existence of one of its most courageous and audacious offspring, René Pedro Fraga Moreno was immortalized as one of the most emblematic titans of the heroic forge of brave men of our struggle for independence.

Since that fateful July 24th, 1957, when Batista’s tyranny snatched from the Cuban Revolution the existence of one of its most courageous and audacious offspring, Rene Pedro Fraga Moreno was immortalized as one of the most emblematic titans of the heroic forge of brave men of our struggle for independence.

Born in the city of Matanzas on May 1st, 1930, the young Fraga Moreno professed from an early age the cult of values such as justice and generosity that his parents instilled in him and that he complemented with a meritorious sports career in softball and athletics and a promising literary vocation that led him to compose, among others, profound lyrical texts dedicated to the homeland and its most influential makers.

Eager for professional improvement, he found in the National School for Teachers of Matanzas the scenario to give free rein to another of his most revered passions: teaching. He did not hesitate to share his knowledge with those young people with scarce monetary resources or those who, hungry for knowledge like him, aspired to enter the Normal School.

That nobility of spirit that emanated from his being led him to become an influential student leader and, while he perfected his knowledge between the School of Commerce of Matanzas and the Pedagogy career in the capital’s university, he met those who would become companions in his insurrectionary struggle, such as José Antonio Echeverría, Fructuoso Rodríguez and José Luis Dubroq.

He also promoted the installation of a first aid kit in neighborhood of Los Mangos, as well as medical care and the improvement of health conditions in the area; and his socio-political thinking never lacked the doctrines of José Martí, of whom he was a prolific admirer and defender.

It is not surprising that once the 26th of July Movement materialized, he honourably integrated its ranks collaborating from the Athens of Cuba in the distribution of propaganda, the sale of bonds and the realization of selected sabotages against the henchmen of the ruling tyranny.

The repression was not made to wait before these conducts, not at all supported by the Batista hegemony, which made him prisoner on July 19th, 1957 in the so-called Squadron 41, where his firm silence before the inquisitive interrogations to which he was subjected, made him a target for the most atrocious and cruel tortures.

René Fraga was barely twenty-seven years old on July 24th, 1957 when, in an oversight of his captors, he managed to escape from the prison to a house on Laborde Street, but the impact of a revolver, given by Corporal José «El Pollito» Igarza, hid his ephemeral existence.

The repudiation of the people to whom he gave his heart cried out louder than the reprimands with which the regime’s hired killers threatened to undermine his patriotic burial and, 67 years after those days, the imprint of this paradigm survives in the multiple enclaves of the country that bear his name and, among them, the central park of his hometown that once saw him grow up and that today, gloriously, remembers him.

Written by Yadiel Barbón Salgado.