Dulce Maria Escalona Almeida was born in Holguin on August 15, 1901.  She was considered one of the most talented and dedicated women to the study of the problems of education and Cuban society during several decades. Her life was immersed in the processes of revolutionary upheaval, of which she was a witness and protagonist. He studied at the Normal School for Teachers in Santiago de Cuba. In 1921 he graduated as Bachelor in Sciences and Letters and three years later he obtained the title of Doctor in Pedagogy at the University of Havana, where he joined the Left Wing of the Student Directory and was a member of the University Pedagogical Association. In 1923 he participated in the First Student Congress. She met the student leader Julio Antonio Mella and collaborated as a teacher in the Popular University "José Martí" that he created. In 1926, she obtained by competitive examination, as an intern, the Chair of Science at the Normal School for Teachers in Havana. Subsequently, she assumed it as Titular.  In 1930 she was dismissed for signing the student proclamation against the dictator Gerardo Machado and was imprisoned in 1931.

Years later she collaborated in the foundation of the "Association of Friends of the New School" and the "Pedagogical Academy", to maintain the professional improvement of teachers.  In 1934 she was appointed Director of the Industrial Technical School of the Rosalía Abreu Foundation.  In 1937 she began to work again in the Normal School, and between 1948 and 1950 she was the director of this center. Given the prevailing situation in the country where corruption and repression prevailed due to the existence of a dictatorship, she decided to retire in 1958. In 1959, with the triumph of the Revolution, she immediately returned to her work in the educational field. She held different responsibilities, among them Provincial Director of Education of Havana, and Director of Education of the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Havana. She was also the founding Director of the Enrique José Varona Teacher Training Institute. She died in Havana on February 22, 1976.

Student Directory

University Student Directory (DEU). Political organization that emerged in 1927 and reconstituted in 1930. The 1927 Directory was focused on combating the extension of powers of President Gerardo Machado, while the 1930 Directory was an insurrectional organization committed to bringing down the Machado dictatorship. On November 6, 1933 the DEU published its last manifesto in which it communicated its dissolution.