Julio Antonio Mella and Olivia Margarita Zaldívar (Olivín) met in the actions of the UH’s avant-garde youth. She from Camagüey, he from Havana, both law students and student leaders fell completely in love.
Olivia’s rebellious and determined character together with a singular beauty forever lit the heart of the young Mella, distinguished by his intelligence, intrepidity and a physique endowed with an athletic, tall bearing, with a charming smile like few others.
Olivín faced family misunderstandings, this young man with communist ideas, natural son, out of wedlock to Nicanor Mella, his father, without his father’s last name, only carried his mother’s Cecilia MacParland, in addition to mestizo complexion, determined the opposition of the Father Oscar Zaldívar Peyrellade, surveyor, landowner, married to Olivia Freyre Cisneros, a cultured woman and outstanding pianist.
Wedding
Mella, 21, and Olivín, 20, married on July 19th, 1924. The ceremony was held in the Municipal Court of North Havana, in the presence of her mother Olivia, and in the absence of Oscar, the father of the bride. As witnesses, the aunt-in-law Susana de Varona and her husband, the latter signed before the bride and groom arrived and left. Really, there was no positive family participation, neither joy, nor acceptance. From the beginning, the marriage was marked by the impoliteness of the house of the young newlywed.
The lovers enjoyed their honeymoon in Camagüey, right at the residence of the bride’s parents, in La Vigía neighborhood, on Mártires Avenue no. 135, today 372.
Student political activity of the newlyweds
Both participated in the leadership of the University Reform Movement, in the assemblies of the University Student Federation, in the First National Congress of Students, in the foundation of the José Martí Popular University and its faculty.
Although Mella had an intense political life against North American imperialism, in favor of the sovereignty of Cuba, by also founding the first Communist Party and the Cuban section of the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas, Olivín was interested in the struggles of the port workers, their problems, she was also concerned about the outcasts, even suffering the rejection of teachers for her diaphanous radical affiliation.
The substantial investigators Adys Cupull and Froilán Gómez emphasize that, before Mella’s arrest for his political activities, there was the brave reaction of the wife, hitting the pale policeman’s eye with her purse. She blamed Gerardo Machado for whatever happened to her husband in prison. In fact, Zaldívar moved influences, so they painted the prison, placed cots, a table to eat and allowed visitors.
Of love, the expected fruit
Mella’s and his wife’s first baby, a girl, died at birth. Both in Mexico. She became pregnant again and Natasha was born on August 19th, 1927. Economic hardship prompted Julio Antonio to go to the United States to seek employment and support his daughter and his wife. Olivia had decided to be with her husband in the United States, but she decided to stay in Cuba due to family security pressures for the second baby, which she accepted.
The researchers, Cupull and González, allow us to note the opinion of a Mexican writer, Rafael Carrillo, in this regard:
“Mella repeatedly asked Olivín to reconsider her departure, that he was sorry to lose her; they were both in love, but she thought more about her role as a future mother and she was not compromising enough regarding the dimension of her husband’s ideals, to which she was not willing to give in … “.
However, Olivia writes to her husband on August 31st, 1928:
” […] the fear of embarking on an adventure with Natasha holds me down and I continue to wait for a long time… The day before yesterday, the 29th, I also remembered you a lot, it had been exactly a year since we parted ways… Sometimes I think that we will never see each other again see more. Life has so many unbelievable things!
Always together in spirit
On January 10th, 1929, Julio Antonio Mella was assassinated in Mexico. Olivia, then, first moved to the United States, from her position of lawyer and widow, she gave the order to investigate the crime. She then goes to Mexico and declares to the press that she visited the tomb as an altar, and that she did not care that he fell giving holding the hand of another woman, Tina Modotti, she could have been his friend for a day, but she was his love. She affirmed that if Julio Antonio had time to pronounce a name when her body was pierced by bullets, that name was surely hers: OLIVÍN.
Bibliography
Cupull, Adys y Froilán González. (2020) Julio Antonio y Natasha Mella: “Rencuentro al final del camino“, Editorial Ácana, Camagüey, Cuba.
Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García
