Early Life and Revolution
Almeida was born in a poor area of Havana. He left school at the age of eleven and became a bricklayer. Whilst studying law at the University of Havana in 1952, he became close friends with the revolutionary Fidel Castro and in March of that year joined the Cuban Revolution. In 1953 he joined Fidel and his brother Raúl Castro in the assault on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago, and was arrested and imprisoned with the Castro brothers in the Isle of Pines Prison. During the amnesty of May 15, 1955, he was released and transferred to Mexico.
Almeida returned to Cuba with the Castro brothers, Che Guevara and 78 other revolutionaries on the Granma expedition, and was one of just 12 who survived the initial landing, during which Cuban government forces killed most of the rebels. During the battle, Almeida shouted "No one here gives up!" (alternatively "here, nobody surrenders") to Guevara, which would become a long-lived slogan of the Cuban revolution. Almeida was also reputed to be a good marksman. Following the landing, Almeida continued to fight Fulgencio Batista's government forces in the guerilla war in the Sierra Maestra mountain range. In 1958, he was promoted to Commander and head of the Santiago Column of the Revolutionary Army. During the revolution, as a black man in a prominent position, he served as a symbol to Afro-Cubans of change from Cuba's discriminatory past.
Read more about this topic: Juan Almeida Bosque
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life and/or revolution:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread”; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“I want relations which are not purely personal, based on purely personal qualities; but relations based upon some unanimous accord in truth or belief, and a harmony of purpose, rather than of personality. I am weary of personality.... Let us be easy and impersonal, not forever fingering over our own souls, and the souls of our acquaintances, but trying to create a new life, a new common life, a new complete tree of life from the roots that are within us.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Fascism was a counter-revolution against a revolution that never took place.”
—Ignazio Silone (1900–1978)