José (Tato) Rodríguez Vedo, a young Camagüeyan born on February 20, 1939, was only 19 years old, an outstanding fighter of the 13th of March Revolutionary Directorate who excelled in the student struggles.
His fellow students at the Professional School of Commerce of Camagüey remember him as a young man with a sparkling, generous and friendly character; Tato was handsome, cheerful, restless, a lover of motorcycling and had a firm revolutionary convictions that he manifested in the scene of the student struggles.
He was beaten by the services of Batista’s tyranny during the seizure of the school of economics of La ciudad de los Tinajones, an operation of the revolutionaries in the territory; 19 comrades were imprisoned by the henchmen, some tortured and others assassinated.
After being captured by the police forces, he moved to the capital of the country in February 56 and joined the struggles against the dictatorship from the ranks of the Revolutionary Directorate, organization in which he fulfilled different missions, among them, traveling abroad to get weapons and thus mislead the enemy.
In March 1958 he returned clandestinely to Cuba and immediately continued the struggle in Havana together with his partner in action, the student leader and revolutionary fighter Pedro Martínez Brito, also former student of the Camagüey School of Economics.
Four months after returning from exile in Miami, Mexico City and New York, fighting for the Cuban revolution, José (Tato) Rodríguez Vedo was assassinated on July 10, 1958 while trying to escape from an apartment in Vedado; upon hearing the news, the family claimed the body and brought it to the house where he was born.
In spite of the police presence at the funeral, his companions of study, profession and revolutionary actions went to give him the last farewell; the women members of the 26th of July movement attended dressed in red and black and a multitude accompanied the body along República street in the city of Camagüey.
The siege of the guards could not prevent the singing of the national anthem nor prevent the Camagüeyan writer and poet Luis Suardíaz to say goodbye to the mourning with the honors that a true patriot deserves.
