Clodomira Acosta Ferrales (1 February 1936 – 17 September 1958) was a Cuban revolutionary who joined the 26th of July Movement as a courier, carrying messages to and from the guerrillas in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra. She came from a rural peasant background and was illiterate. During her time in the rebel army, she managed to escape capture several times. Her abilities as a messenger earned her the admiration of Fidel Castro, who sent her to gather intelligence for him. She often worked alongside her friend and fellow courier, Lidia Doce.

On 12 September 1958, Acosta and her friend Doce were arrested. They were tortured and killed by police under the command of Esteban Ventura Novo, and their bodies were dumped into the sea. Acosta and Doce have been memorialized as martyrs of the Cuban Revolution and honored by Castro and the Federation of Cuban Women.

Early life Clodomira Acosta was born on 1 February 1936, in a rural community in the Oriente province of Cuba. She was Afro-Cuban and mixed race. Her family was poor and worked on a citrus farm along the . She was one of seven children. There were no schools in her area, so Acosta grew up without an education and was illiterate. When Acosta was nine years old, she left the farm to work as a maid in Manzanillo, but she returned soon after.

26th of July Movement By the time Acosta was twenty years old, the Cuban Revolution had been underway for several years, with rebel groups forming in rural communities as part of an emergent movement to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. She decided to join one such rebel group in her area after witnessing the brutality of the Cuban Rural Guard. At first, she took on "feminized tasks" at the rebel camp, like washing clothes, until she began carrying messages for the rebels. During one of her missions, she was captured and interrogated by the authorities. They shaved her head and locked her in a room. She escaped by setting a fire and using the smoke and ensuing chaos to leap through a window without being noticed. Acosta fled through several towns until she reached La Vega de la Yua and joined another rebel group. In January 1958, after she was arrested and escaped a second time, she joined Fidel Castro's rebelsthe 26th of July Movementin the Sierra Maestra as a courier. At this point, Castro was already aware of Acosta's exploits and her ability to escape capture.

Acosta was skilled at memorizing messages and was assigned "highly sensitive missions" by Castro. For one such mission in February 1958, she successfully established communication with the (DR) rebel group in the Escambray Mountains and questioned Faure Chomón, one of the leaders. She gathered intelligence to help Castro's forces better understand the DR, its members, and its revolutionary goals. While Acosta was in the Escambray Mountains, Batista's forces ambushed the group, and she was separated from everyone. She traversed the mountainside alone and found her way to a different section of the DR, where she met and questioned Ramón Pando Ferrer. Ultimately, she returned to the Sierra Maestra and passed this information on to Castro.

In April 1958, Castro called upon Acosta to deliver an urgent message to the , the urban underground wing of the revolutionary forces. The roads were blocked, so she had to improvise. She made a scene in front of the guards, pretending that she needed to pass to reach her "gravely ill mother". The ruse worked. In other instances, she was known to travel with her friend's daughter and hide messages inside the girl's doll.

Acosta became friends with another courier named Lidia Doce. According to Che Guevara: (). She also worked with revolutionary Celia Sánchez, who referred to her by the nickname "Clodo". After discovering that she was illiterate, Sánchez offered to help her attend a school, but she refused. Still, Acosta carried a notebook with her and would often climb a tree to sit and write in it. According to Sánchez, the pages were filled with scribbles.

Castro planned to promote her to a leadership position in the Mariana women's platoon. According to one member of the platoon, Acosta was qualified "based upon her merits, her experience, and her trustworthiness", and Castro told her to prepare for her new position when she returned from a mission to Havana in September 1958.

Capture and death While on her final mission in Havana, Acosta and Doce stayed with four other revolutionaries at an apartment in the Juanelo neighborhood of San Miguel del Padrón. In the early hours of 12 September 1958, Batista's forces stormed the apartment and shot their comrades. Acosta and Doce were "badly beaten" and arrested by police under the command of the police chief, Esteban Ventura. Ventura had previously been indicted for torturing and murdering prisoners; in the words of historian Julia E. Sweig, he was "notoriously sadistic".

The details of Acosta and Doce's imprisonment, torture, and extrajudicial killing come from the testimony of one of Ventura's subordinates, Carratala, who gave a confession from his prison cell in La Cabaña, where he was facing charges from the new revolutionary Cuban government following the rebel victory in Havana in January 1959. Acosta fought against her captors, biting one of them and leaving marks on his shoulder. Carratala described how the two women were put in bags filled with sand and repeatedly lowered into the sea until they died. Their bodies were left to sink into the sea. Later, one of the combatants captured during the Bay of Pigs corroborated this account. 17 September is historically considered to be the day on which they died, but at least one source contends that they could have died as early as 13 September.

Legacy Acosta and Doce have been memorialized as martyrs and national heroes of the Cuban Revolution. At the founding of the Federation of Cuban Women on 23 August 1960, Castro honored both women, saying Acosta was ().

A museum in Regla, Cuba, maintains exhibits dedicated to Acosta, Doce, and the rebels who were killed on 12 September 1958.

See also Alberto Álvarez Díaz, one of the revolutionaries killed when Acosta was captured on 12 September 1958.

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