The funeral of Julio A. Mella, founder of Cuban Communism, murdered in Mexico Cit on .January 10, 1929.

‘Mexican Masses Honor Julio Mella’ by Julio Juranito from The Daily Worker. Vol. 5 No. 322. January 14, 1929.

Killed by Cuban Agents of U.S. Imperialism

LONG PROCESSION FOLLOWS BODY OF MURDERED CUBAN THRU MEXICO’S CAPITAL

Police Attack Demonstration Before Cuban Embassy and Shelter Mella’s Assassins Communists Demand United Front Against U.S. Imperialism and Its Murderous Lackeys

MEXICO CITY, Jan. 13. Thousands of Mexican workers participated in the enormous funeral procession which left the headquarters of the Mexican Communist Party at noon today, bearing the body of Julio Mella to the grave. The procession sang the “International,” and carried the same red banners, now wrinkled and water-stained, which the police drenched with fire hose Saturday night when they violently dispersed a Mella demonstration.

Carrillo, secretary of the Mexican Communist Party, addressed the procession from the balcony of the Party’s headquarters, accusing the Cuban government directly of Mella’s assassination. The procession then moved on to the National Palace, where Ursulo Galvan, a leader of the National Peasants’ League, spoke, declaring that President Machado of Cuba is a tool of American imperialism.

From the National Palace the procession went on to the courtyard of the National Law School, where Mella was a student, and thence to the National Theatre. Diego Rivera, the world famous Communist artist, addressed the procession as it halted before the Juarez monument. Rivera attacked the Mexicali bourgeoisie and the Mexican government which was responsible for breaking up the first Mella demonstration Saturday night. The procession then moved on to the offices of the Communist Party press and finally to the Pantheon Dolores.

Prior to Mella’s assassination on the night of January 10 by hired gunmen in the pay of the Machado government, the Cuban government had attempted to obtain Mella’s extradition from Mexico. The Cuban government recently sent a number of high officials to Mexico to distribute Cuban decorations to Mexican officials, high and low. At that time, Silva Herzog, the present Mexican minister to the Soviet Union, declined to accept a decoration, declaring that he refused to accept a “decoration from a government of assassins.”

The Cuban government was obviously preparing Cuban bourgeois opinion for the assassination of Mella. A short time ago it announced in the Machado press that at a workers’ demonstration in Mexico City, Mella had torn a Cuban flag. This statement was utterly false, nevertheless the Mexican ambassador to Cuba apologized for the “incident,” which never existed outside the columns of the fascist press.

In a similar manner, the Mexican police, following Mella’s murder, attempted to shield the crime of the Cuban government by circulating a false report to the press that Mella was killed by a jealous rival in a quarrel over a girl. This has been denied by Tina Modotti, who was with Mella before and during the murder and at the operating table when he died, as well as by another eyewitness of the assassination.

The Mexican Communist Party has declared that the Cuban ambassador to Mexico is spending enormous sums to corrupt the Mexican police and press. The Mexican police is now headed by Puig Casauranc, the new governor of the federal district, who is a close personal friend of the Cuban ambassador to Mexico.

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MEXICO CITY, Jan. 13.—Deepest indignation prevails and spreads hourly wider among the Mexican masses at the atrocious murder of Julio Mella. Official denials by the Cuban ambassador, G. Fernandez Mascaro, to the charge of the workers that Mella was deliberately assassinated by agents of the Machado government of Cuba, are laughed to scorn and do not find the slightest credence even in the capitalist press.

Not since the legal murder of Sacco and Vanzetti by the capitalists of the United States, have the workers and peasants of Mexico been so aroused against Yankee imperialism, which all hold responsible for the murder.

The Mexican police, under the government of President Portes Gil, who “cannot find” Mella’s murderers, but who were active enough in attacking workers demonstrating their protest before the Cuban embassy, are accused of sheltering the agents of the Cuban government who carried out their plans on Mexican soil of assassinating Mella.

While the press generally is filled with news accounts of the case, only one paper, “La Prensa,” has demanded that the government of Gil take action against the murderers. Gil’s government, however, which has done nothing to apprehend the assassins, instead only offers the Cuban ambassador, whom everyone knows is implicated in the murder, its protection from the Mexican workers and has surrounded the Cuban assassins’ headquarters with great forces of police. The ambassador-assassin has even the effrontery to vilify Mella in the press, from behind the lines of police guards.

Moving Funeral Ceremony.

Before the great procession began of workers who followed Mella to his grave, his body rested in state in the hall at the headquarters of the Mexican Communist Party. The hall was draped with red and black, and for the last twenty-four hours the body of the victim of American imperialism was watched over by guards of honor, changed hourly, while a steady stream of workers and peasants filed by, hour after hour. On the faces were a sorrow and an anger that bodes no good to American imperialists and their agents, both Mexican and Cuban.

Absurd Charges by Police.

The police under President Fortes Gil, are trying to cover up their assistance to the assassins, by holding Mella’s sweetheart and comrade, Tina Modotti, under arrest and charging that Mella was killed by some rival lover. Comrade Modotti when interviewed ridiculed the idea and said:

“It is an infamy for the police to try to make out that this was a sentimental case. It is clearly a case of a political assassination by the Cuban government which has similarly murdered hundreds of other Cuban workers for the same reason—their opposition to its subserviency to U. S. imperialism. Mella was purely an idealistic boy who fought for his principles and died for them.”

“Mella was potentially the greatest revolutionist in Latin America.”

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1929/1929-ny/v05-n322-NY-jan-14-1929-DW-LOC.pdf