Blas Roca Calderio

Blas Roca Calderio (24 July 1908 – 25 April 1987) was a Cuban politician who served as President of the National Assembly of People's Power in Cuba from 1976 to 1981. He was also head of the Communist Party of Cuba and editor of the communist newspaper Hoy.

Political life

Blas Roca, a leading theoretician of the Cuban Revolution who led Cuba's prerevolutionary Communist Party, left school at the age of 11 and began shining shoes to help support his poor family. He changed his name to Roca, meaning 'rock', after he joined the Communist Party in 1929.

In 1929, he was elected Secretary General of the Union of Shoemakers of Manzanillo. In August 1931 he was co-opted to the Central Committee of the Communist Party and head of his organization in the East. During this stage displayed a wide journalistic activity in the labor press and led the popular protests that culminated in the historic general strike of August 1933, which overthrew the Machado dictatorship.

Blas had grown remarkably in a few years as result of their own ability and intensive blanks in the struggles workers' and popular and was called to the capital at the times that the party needed a strong and guiding direction, more so when the leader of the moment Ruben Martinez Villena, would make his last public appearance in September 1933, at Mella fire's remains, to never recover their lamentable condition. Thus, at 26 years of age, Blas had become the leader of the Communists Cubans.