Jesús Suárez Gayol, The Rubio who fought alongside Che Guevara

On May 24, 1936, the outstanding revolutionary Jesús Suárez Gayol, Cuban internationalist fighter, member of the 26th of July Movement and one of Che Guevara’s guerrilla fighters in Bolivia, known as El Rubio, was born in Manatí, nowadays Las Tunas province, on May 24, 1936.

After the death of his father and being a teenager, he moved with his mother to the city of Camagüey; he attended the second year of high school at the Instituto de Segunda Enseñanza, where he was surprised by the news that Batista had carried out the coup d’état and on March 10 he began to reveal himself and due to his gifts as an organizer he united the youth forces, transmitted enthusiasm and participated in the revolutionary demonstrations, becoming the natural leader of the students of Camagüey.

Suárez Gayol organized the Student Federation of Camagüey and incorporated the Institutes of Morón and Ciego de Avila, and when the first cell of the 26th of July Movement was created in the area, he was elected as the person in charge of the Youth Brigades.

He enrolled in Architecture at the University of Havana, together with his friend José A. Echeverría and the revolutionaries Antonio Ñico López and Gerardo Abreu (Fontán) he faced the dangers, suffered persecution, beatings, tortures and knew the dungeons of the prison.

Persecuted and marked by the tyranny, he went into exile from which he returned in an expedition that disembarked in La Coloma, in Pinar del Rio, on April 9, 1958 and remained in exile until he went down to the plain as head of Action and Sabotage of the M/26/7 of the province, in an operation he suffered burns in both feet and while convalescing he moved to Las Villas, where he joined the troop led by Ernesto Che Guevara.

After the revolutionary triumph, Jesús Suárez Gayol is distinguished by his personal example, enthusiasm and perseverance in work, conditions for him to occupy different responsibilities as Provincial Delegate of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform in Las Villas, Director of the Consolidated Flour Company in 1961, among other entities; and when the Ministry of Sugar (MINAZ) was created in 1964, he was appointed Vice Minister of Production.

Summoned by Che Guevara to join the struggle for the liberation of the peoples, on December 19, 1966 he joined the guerrilla nucleus as part of the rearguard; months later, in the early morning of April 10, 1967, while participating in an ambush against the Bolivian army, he was mortally wounded at only 30 years of age.

When he was about to leave for Bolivia he wrote to his mother about his decision “When you are a true revolutionary you feel the need to serve the Revolution from the most difficult places, in the vanguard posts”.

He also sent a farewell letter to his young son in which he advised: “I want you to always reject what is easy, what is comfortable. Everything that exalts and honors implies sacrifices… Remember that I want you, faced with the alternatives that life offers you, to always choose the Star that illuminates and kills”.