Florida, Feb. 23 – On February 23, 1937, at only 25 years of age, the internationalist fighter Rodolfo de Armas Soto, a Cuban medical student who had stood out in the protests against the Machado dictatorship, died in combat in the Spanish Civil War.
As a young man he stood out in major street actions such as the mobilizations during the hunger strike of communist and student leader Julio Antonio Mella and later became a prominent member of the action group Milicia Pro Ley y Justicia which focused on the organization of sabotage.
Harassed by the security forces, he went into exile in the United States with the fixed idea of contributing from there to the fall of the dictatorship in Cuba. In New York he became one of the pillars of the Mella Club, became strongly linked to the American Communist Party and was an assiduous member of the Circle of Marxist Studies.
When the military uprising broke out in Spain, he joined the «freedom volunteers» and played a leading role in the organization of the so-called Lincoln Battalion, made up mostly of Americans and democratic Cubans; he left for the Iberian nation at the head of about 100 Cuban nationals organized in a company called Centuria Guiteras and on the battlefield he reached the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Rodolfo de Armas Soto died fighting the fascist hordes in the Battle of Jaramay and together with him, the Cubans Carlos Guijarros, Antonio Rodriguez, Angel Rufo, Pedro Hernandez, Jorge Cabezas and Aquilino Conejo lost their lives.
