Founded 1925 (1925) Headquarters Havana | Dissolved 1961 (1961) Newspaper Hoy | |
General Secretary Blas Roca Calderio (last) Succeeded by Integrated Revolutionary Organizations | ||
The Popular Socialist Party (Spanish: Partido Socialista Popular, PSP) was a communist party in Cuba. Originally called the Communist Party of Cuba (Spanish: Partido Comunista de Cuba), it was formed in the 1925 by a group including Blas Roca, Anibal Escalante, Fabio Grobart, Alfonso Bernal del Riesgo and Julio Antonio Mella, who acted as its leader until his assassination in Mexico in 1929. It was later renamed the "Communist Revolutionary Union". The party supported Gerardo Machado and Fulgencio Batista, joining his first government in 1940 with one minister without portfolio, and was initially critical of Fidel Castro. After the electoral victory of the Partido Auténtico in the 1944 elections, the party went into decline, and eventually adopted the name "Popular Socialist Party" for electoral reasons.
In the 1944 general elections it formed an alliance with the Orthodox Party, but was defeated by the Auténtico-Republican alliance, winning only four seats in the House of Representatives. They went on to win five seats in the 1946 mid-term elections.
In the 1948 general election the party put forward Juan Marinello as its presidential candidate. Whilst he finished fourth, the party won five seats in the House elections. They won four in the 1950 mid-term elections.
In 1961 the party merged into the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI), the precursor of the current Communist Party of Cuba.