País, Frank (1934–1957)

Frank País (b. 1934; d. 30 July 1957), Cuban revolutionary leader during the Batista dictatorship. Born in Santiago de Cuba, País is best remembered as the leader of the 1956 Santiago uprising that coincided with the landing of Fidel Castro and his followers in Oriente Province on 2 December on the boat Granma. Under the Batista dictatorship, País built his reputation as a guerrilla fighter and member of Acción Nacional Revolucionaria. In 1955 País and his followers agreed to merge with Castro's Twenty-Sixth of July Movement and to coordinate the Cuban operations with Castro's landing from Mexico. On 30 November 1956, País led an uprising in Santiago that was briefly successful, with the insurrectionists taking control of the city. Stormy weather delayed Castro's landing, however, giving Batista's forces time to quell the País uprising before turning their attention to the landing of the Granma. While País escaped capture, he was killed less than a year later, on 30 July 1957, by the Santiago police. Páis's death was a great blow to the llano wing—the lowland and urban wing, as opposed to Castro's Sierra group—of the Cuban revolutionary movement. His role was so important that Ernesto "Che" Guevara asked to take the deceased País's place as leader of the Santiago revolutionary movement.

See alsoBatista y Zaldívar, Fulgencio; Castro Ruz, Fidel; Cuba, Twenty-Sixth of July Movement.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Peter G. Bourne, Fidel: A Biography of Fidel Castro (1986).

Robert Quirk, Fidel Castro (1993).

Additional Bibliography

Menéndez Tomassevich, Raúl, and José A. Gárciga Blanco. Golpes para el triunfo. Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente, 1998.

Monroy, Juan Antonio. Frank Pais: Lider evangélico en la Revolución Cubana. Terrasa, España: Editorial Clie, 2003.

Sweig, Julia E. Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

                                   Michael Powelson