Asela de los Santos

Revolutionary activity

Following the 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks by the 26th of July Movement, de los Santos joined the Cuban Revolutionary Army. She aided the surviving fighters from that action and taught soldiers to read. In November 1956 she helped organize an armed action in Santiago de Cuba, and in 1957 she transported fighters to join Fidel Castro in the Sierra Maestra range alongside Celia Sánchez and Vilma Espín.

Governmental roles

After the Cuban Revolution succeeded, de los Santos was put in charge of education throughout Oriente province. Between 1966 and 1970, as a Captain, she led education for the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, setting up classes for rural children in reopened local schools and organizing study groups to teach illiterate soldiers to read. She helped found the Communist Party of Cuba and sat on its Central Committee for three terms from 1975 to 1991.

Raúl Castro named her Deputy Minister of Education in 1974, and she became Minister of Education in 1979. In those posts, she was key to the national literacy campaign and met with Ethiopian Education Minister Goshu Wolde when his delegation came in 1979 to learn from Cuban teaching methods. Alongside Espín, she co-founded the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) in 1960 and served as its general secretary. That same year, with sugar mills and cane fields under attack just before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the FMC set up Emergency Medical Response Brigades to rally women against counter-revolutionaries.

She also held a national leadership role in the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution. In January 1966, she took part in the Tricontinental Conference of African, Asian, and Latin American Peoples in Havana.

Did You Know?

• She married José Ramón Fernández, a fellow founding member of the Communist Party of Cuba and commander of Cuban defenses during the Bay of Pigs invasion.
• After the death of Fidel Castro in 2016, Raúl Castro appointed her as the Honorary Chair for the Study of the Thought and Work of Fidel Castro.