Peña, Lazaro

Born May 29, 1911, in Havana; died there Mar. 11, 1974. Figure in the Cuban and international labor movements.

Peña, a tobacco worker, joined the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC) in 1929. He helped found the Confederation of Latin American Workers in 1938 and was elected a member of the Central Committee (CC) and vice-president of the confederation. From 1939 to 1947 he served as secretary-general of the Confederation of Cuban Workers, and from 1961 to 1966 and again from November 1973, as secretary-general of the Trade Union Center of Cuban Workers. A member of the executive committee of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) from 1945 to 1969, Peña was vice-president of the WFTU from 1949 to 1969. He was a member of the WFTU’s secretariat from 1957 to 1959 and a member of its executive bureau from 1969.

From 1933 to 1944, Peña was a member of the CC of the CPC, and from 1944 to 1961, a member of the executive committee of the national committee of the People’s Socialist Party. Between 1961 and 1965 he was a leader of the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations and subsequently of the Unified Party of the Socialist Revolution. A member of the CC of the CPC from 1965, Peña was chairman of the CC’s commission on labor affairs from 1966 to 1973 and chief of the CC’s department of mass organizations from 1973.