I grew up listening to the story of my grandmother, who said that on a hot Havana day on March 13, 1957, she, as usual, was looking for soap operas for radio and accidentally stopped at Radio Reloj. This is how he listened to the address of José Antonio Echeverría. “When they cut off his voice, I knew that something very serious would happen to him,” he thought then. And, unfortunately, I was not mistaken.

My profession once led me to meet Juan Nuiri, one of the protagonists of the feat in which the University Students’ Federation (FEU) and its Revolutionary Directorate decided to “execute the tyrant in his own hole.”

When we first met, he told me: “Look how powerful it was for the Cubans that everyone I know tells me what they were doing when the events happened… No one forgot about it, no matter how insignificant it was.”

So I told her the story of my grandmother, and she told me: “With the younger ones, I almost always escape from a joke, but this didn’t happen with you.” And he brought out that infectious laugh he possessed and cemented our friendship, which ended only with his death in October 2013.

Every year around this time, Juan called me on the phone and said: “Come, we’ll confer.” So we spent the evening looking through old newspapers, looking at pictures, calling their fighting friends, and from there we compiled a report for rebellious youth. Something that was repeated when one of those dates that marked the history of the student organization approached.

Thus, I was fortunate to meet several of the main actors of those events: Fore Chomon Mediavilla, Angel Eros Sanchez, Julio Garcia Oliveras (all participants in the events either in the Palace or on Radio Reloy). And Thalia Laucirique Gallardo, who was a friend and classmate of José Antonio Echeverría at university and attended his funeral because she was in Cardenas, their hometown, when the events happened.

I learned a lot more about José Antonio Echeverría, Fructuoso Rodriguez, Juan Pedro Carbo Servia, José Machado Rodriguez and Joe Westbrook Rosales; as well as participants in other FEU feats such as Francisco Castillo Gonzalez, who participated in the first March of the Torches.

Juan spoke about his experiences with such passion that the curiosity awakened in me by my grandmother’s story became a sight and a sound. And his memories multiplied on the pages of his diary.

In these times, when the events that mark the roots of the nation are pushed further and further in time, it will be necessary to look for new formulas so that these stories continue to reach the youngest, and new generations do not forget how much was done and how much the Revolution cost, which we have today.

Source: Juventud Rebelde