The following is a tribute by the Communist Party of Cuba to Cuban revolutionary heroine Melba Hernández, who together with Haydee Santamaría, were the two women who participated in the heroic and fateful assault on the Moncada barracks, July 26, 1953, under the leadership of Fidel Castro. She died March 10, 2014.
Granma newspaper
March 10, 2014
With profound sorrow, the leadership of the Party and State informs our people that the Heroine of Moncada Melba Hernández Rodríguez del Rey, member of the Party’s Central Committee and deputy to the National Assembly of People’s Power, died in this capital yesterday, Sunday March 9, from complications due to diabetes mellitus, an illness she suffered from for many years.
Beloved comrade Melba Hernández was born in Cruces, in the former province of Las Villas, July 28, 1921, to a family of Mambí lineage. She graduated as a lawyer in the University of Havana School of Law in 1943.
She participated actively in the struggle against the Batista tyranny, being one of the first to join the ranks of the revolutionary movement led by Fidel. Together with Haydée Santamaría, she was among the combatants in the assault of July 26, 1953. She was witness to the savage torture and assassination of her heroic comrades.
Condemned to prison in the National Women’s Prison in Guanajay, after her release Melba played a decisive role in the gathering and organization of notes that Fidel succeeded in sending out of the Modelo prison, in which she reconstructed his allocution in the Moncada trial— ater known as “History Will Absolve Me,”—as well as in the later publishing and clandestine distribution.
In May 1955 she participated in the meeting held in the boat “El Pinero,” which carried the amnestied ex-prisoners from Isle of Pines, and where under the leadership of Fidel, the name July 26th was decided for the revolutionary movement. She formed part of its National Leadership.
She went to Mexico, where she carried out important missions and on November 25, 1956, in the port of Tuxpan, she bid farewell to the Granma expeditionaries.
She joined the Rebel Army in the ranks of the “Mario Muñoz Monroy” Third Front, directed by Comandante Juan Almeida Bosque.
After the triumph of the Revolution she carried out important responsibilities, among them as President of the Cuban Committee in Solidarity with South Vietnam, and later of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos; as member of the Presidium of the World Peace Council; General Secretary of the Organization in Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America Latina (OSPAAAL); as ambassador of Cuba to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Kampuchea, and as director of the Center for the Study of Asia and Oceania.
She was a founder of the Party and member of its Central Committee from the Third Congress, as well as delegate to the National Assembly from 1976 to 1986, and was elected again in 1993.
For her merits she received many honors and national and international awards, among which stand out the honorific titles of Heroine of Labor and Heroine of the Republic of Cuba. For our people, she is one of the most glorious and beloved combatants of the revolutionary process, an everlasting of the Cuban woman.
According to her wishes, her cadaver will be cremated and her ashes reposed in the Ministry of Revolutionary Armed Forces until they are transferred to the Santa Ifigenia cemetery, to be deposited together with the remains of her comrades of the Moncada assault.
The Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee
