May, 2025 – On May 23, 1913, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez was born in Cienfuegos, intellectual, politician, economist, diplomat, journalist and Cuban revolutionary who dedicated his life to fight for his ideals and for many years was a leader of the Communist Party of Cuba, an organization he joined in 1936.
It was in those streets and in the classrooms of the Monserrat and Hermanos Maristas schools where Carlos Rafael’s fervor began. At the age of 17 he participated in his hometown in a demonstration against the government of Gerardo Machado in protesextensive,t for the fall of Rafael Trejo, and at 18 he published his first article Fuerzas encontradas in the newspaper El País in Havana, on August 12, 1931.
For his extensive culture he was praised by intellectuals such as Manuel Navarro Luna, Jorge Mañach and Medardo Vitier and in 1935 when Carlos Rafael entered the University of Havana he was part of the editorial team of the Universidad magazine, and on January 10 he gave a speech in the lecture hall in commemoration of the fall of Julio Antonio Mella.
In that high house of studies he completed in four years the career of Law and Political, Social and Economic Sciences, and strengthened his intellectual thinking; Carlos Rafael Rodriguez was a founding member of the Popular Socialist Party (PSP) and led the clandestine struggle of that organization against the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista.
In June 1958 he was appointed representative of the PSP before the Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, in the Sierra Maestra; on his return to Havana he coordinated the help that the members of his Party would give to the rebel troops, who proposed to carry out the invasion to the West, which were led by the guerrilla commanders Ernesto Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos.
After January 1, 1959, he supported the arrival of the invading columns to Havana and was fully involved in the construction of the new society; in the first years of the Revolution he directed the National Institute of Agrarian Reform, he was Minister-President of the National Commission of Economic and Scientific-Technical Collaboration from 1965 to 1976, period in which he was also Cuba’s permanent representative in the Council of Economic Mutual Aid.
Carlos Rafael Rodríguez was also a member of the Central Committee, the Secretariat and the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba. He was also a deputy to the National Assembly of People’s Power and in 1976 the Cuban Parliament elected him Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers.
