History is full of ordinary men who gave their lives for a just cause. One of them is Jorge Enrique Mendoza Reboredo, a native of Camagüey, born in the central Cisneros Street, who professed an unbreakable loyalty to Fidel.

Jorge Enrique was an active fighter against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. He held intense exchanges for the planning of clandestine actions against the tyranny, together with the revolutionary student leadership of the Institute of Second Education and the Professional School of Commerce.

In the Sierra Maestra he reached the rank of Captain and was the founder of Radio Rebelde.

After the triumph of the revolution, he held the position of delegate of the National Institute of Agrarian Reform in Camagüey and in October of 1959 he had a decisive role in unmasking the plot that Commander Hubert Matos was planning, since it was Jorge Enrique who informed Fidel through a phone call of what was happening in Camagüey.

In this situation, the Commander in Chief ordered Mendoza to unite the revolutionary forces from the police headquarters in Camagüey to stop Hubert Matos’s conspiracy. Furthermore, from the old radio station Radio Legendario he spoke to the people of Camagüey and informed them of what was really happening with Commander Matos. That October of ’59 he demonstrated once again that he lived up to the trust that Fidel Castro placed in him.

His bond with the press went beyond the announcements on Radio Rebelde because for many years he was the director of the Granma Newspaper and until his death in 1994 he headed the Institute of Cuban History.

Since 1999, the Office of the Historian of Camagüey city has awarded the Jorge Enrique Mendoza Reboredo Prize for Historical Research every two years, as a way of keeping alive the mark of an apparently common Camagüey’s son, but with an exceptional life.

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García