On January 11, 1980, 45 years ago, Celia Sanchez Manduley, Cuban revolutionary fighter, politician and researcher, died in Havana; a member of the 26th of July Revolutionary Movement in the former Oriente province that took on the distribution of Fidel’s allegation History will absolve me, and under Frank Pais’ guidance organized the clandestine network of peasants vital for the survival of the guerrilla after the landing of the Granma.
Celia was born on May 9, 1920 and was much more than a reckless heroine, capable of disguising herself as a pregnant woman or crawling through the thorns of a thick bush to evade a fierce police chase; and on Three Kings Day she would go out to hand out toys all over town, because, according to the story, she spent the year saving and making piggy banks for January 6.
Simplicity was one of her most honorable values, and the welfare of her people, their independence, and the establishment of a new social model, the primary objectives of her existence; for those principles and under the pseudonyms of Norma, Carmen, Liliana and Caridad, she joined the revolutionary actions against Fulgencio Batista and his henchmen.
She was the first woman to join the rebels as a soldier in the Sierra Maestra and earned the unconditional trust of their leader Fidel Castro, in whom she believed vehemently; to her extensive work in the revolutionary struggle, we owe, in addition, the creation of the Mariana Grajales platoon, composed only of women.
Celia Sanchez is remembered as a woman who expresses the autochthonous for her legitimate Cuban identity; being a deputy to the Parliament, secretary of the Council of State, and member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, she never stopped behaving with her grace and peasant accent, of people of the people, which is why she is recognized as “the autochthonous flower of the Revolution”.
Considered the adoptive mother of many Cubans, her voice was present in the most important decisions adopted in the Revolution in the first decades, a stage in which she also dedicated herself to collect and organize all the information related to the guerrilla struggle, which led to the creation of the Office of Historical Affairs of the Council of State in 1964.