He traveled north to Mexico City, where he worked with other exiled dissidents and communist sympathizers against the Machado government.

As children, Nicanor Mella and his younger brother Cecilio went to New Orleans with their mother while she convalesced from lung troubles.

[5] Antonio Mella engaged in secondary studies at Chandler College in Marianao, Havana, and Colegio Mimó.

[7] After being released from jail in late 1925, Mella fled to Central America in early 1926, and headed north to Mexico City.

[5] The original "internationalized" Communist Party of Cuba was formed in the 1920s when Gerardo Machado was president and then dictator of the country.

[12] The founders of the Cuban Communist Party are listed as: Julio Antonio Mella, Juan Marinello, Alejandro Barreiro, Carlos Baliño, Alfonso Bernal del Riesgo, Jesús Menéndez, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, Lázaro Peña, Blas Roca, Rubén Martínez Villena, Anibal Escalante, Emilio Roig, Dr Celestino Hernandez Robau, and Fabio Grobart.

Fabio Grobart (aka Abraham Semjovitch; Alberto Blanco) was born in Bialystok, Poland, in 1905 and died in Cuba on 22 October 1994.

[13][14][15][16][17] Other founders also used pseudonym: Mella used such names as Cauhtémoc Zapata, Kim (El Machete), and Lord McPartland in his writing.

For instance Fabio or, in English, Fabian, referred to Roman consul Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, known to have used stealthy tactics.

Fabian Socialism was an English socialist movement, to which playwright George Bernard Shaw belonged, which advocated stealthy democratic change.

Cuban communists were also disturbed by suspecting that Mella had fallen under the influence of former Soviet leader Leon Trotsky.

The Mexican government tried to implicate Modotti in the murder, publishing nude photographs of her by American Edward Weston in an attempt to generate public opinion against her.

Muralist Diego Rivera was highly active in defending her and exposing the Mexican government's crude attempt to frame her.

While two known criminals were charged with his murder, there was speculation that Italian communist assassin Vittorio Vidali had committed the crime.

[26][27][28] Adding to the mystery, according to Albers (2002), both Magriñat and Diego Rivera, who had just returned from Cuba, had warned Mella that he was in danger.

Mella's bust (now replaced by a far larger obelisk[30]) stood in a small park on San Lazaro Avenue slightly east and downhill of Havana University and is the object of much Marxist veneration.

Before the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion, this bust was often blown down at night and could be heard in the silence after the explosion rumbling in a most frightening way as it rolled eastwards[citation needed].

In Caimito, a small town in Artemisa Province, there is a camp called Campamento Internacional Julio Antonio Mella honoring him.