Clodomira Acosta Ferrales

Clodomira Acosta Ferrales (February 1, 1936 – September 17, 1958) was a Cuban revolutionary. She joined the July 26 Movement as a courier, carrying messages to and from the guerrillas in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. She came from a rural peasant background and was illiterate. During her time in the rebel army, she managed to escape capture several times. Her abilities as a messenger earned her the admiration of Fidel Castro, who sent her to gather intelligence for him. She often worked alongside her friend and fellow courier.

On September 12, 1958, Acosta and her friend Doce were arrested by the police. They were tortured and killed, and their bodies were dumped into the sea. Acosta and Doce have been memorialized as martyrs of the Cuban Revolution.

Early life

Clodomira Acosta was born on February 1, 1936 in a rural community in the Oriente province of Cuba. She was Afro-Cuban and mixed race. Her family was poor and worked on a citrus farm along the . She was one of seven children. There were no schools in her area, so Acosta grew up without an education and was illiterate. When Acosta was nine years old, she left the farm to work as a maid in Manzanillo, but she returned soon after.

July 26 Movement

When Acosta was twenty years old, she witnessed the brutality of the Cuban Rural Guard and joined a rebel group in her area. At first, she took on "feminized tasks" at the rebel camp, like washing clothes, until she began carrying messages for the rebels. During one of her missions, she was captured and interrogated by the authorities. They shaved her head and locked her in a room. She escaped by setting a fire and using the smoke and ensuing chaos to leap through a window without being noticed. Acosta fled through several towns until she reached Le Vega de la Yua and joined another rebel group. In January 1958, after she was arrested and escaped a second time, she joined Fidel Castro's rebels in the Sierra Maestra. At this point, Castro was already aware of Acosta's exploits and her ability to escape capture.

Acosta was skilled at memorizing messages and was assigned "highly sensitive missions" by Castro. For one such mission in February 1958, she successfully established communication with the (DR) rebel group in the Escambray Mountains and questioned Faure Chomón, one of the leaders. She gathered intelligence to help Castro's forces better understand the DR, its members, and its revolutionary goals. While Acosta was in the Escambray Mountains, Fulgencio Batista's forces ambushed the group, and she was separated from everyone. She traversed the mountainside alone and found her way to a different section of the DR, where she met and questioned Ramón Pando Ferrer. Ultimately, she returned to the Sierra Maestra and passed this information on to Castro.

Acosta became friends with another courier named . According to Che Guevara: . She also worked with revolutionary Celia Sánchez, who referred to her by the nickname "Clodo". After discovering that she was illiterate, Sánchez offered to help her attend a school, but she refused. Still, Acosta carried a notebook with her and would often climb a tree to sit and write in it. According to Sánchez, the pages were filled with scribbles.

Capture and death

While on a mission in Havana, Acosta and Doce stayed with four other revolutionaries at an apartment in the Juanelo neighborhood of San Miguel del Padrón. In the early hours of September 12, 1958, Batista's forces stormed the apartment and shot their comrades. Acosta and Doce were taken by police, who were under the command of the police chief, Esteban Ventura.

The details of Acosta and Doce's imprisonment, torture, and extrajudicial killing come from the testimony of one of Ventura's subordinates, Carratala, who gave a confession from his prison cell in La Cabaña, where he was facing charges from the new revolutionary Cuban government following the rebel victory in Havana in January 1959. Carratala described how the two women were put in bags filled with sand and repeatedly lowered into the sea until they died. Their bodies were left to sink into the sea. Later, one of the individuals captured during the Bay of Pigs corroborated this account. September 17 is historically considered to be the day that they died, but at least one source contends that they could have died as earlier as September 13.

Legacy

Acosta and Doce have been memorialized as martyrs and national heroes of the Cuban Revolution. At the founding of the Federation of Cuban Women on August 23, 1960, Castro honored both women, saying Acosta was .

In present day, locals in Regla, Cuba maintain a museum with exhibits dedicated to the Acosta, Doce, and the rebels who were killed on September 12, 1958.