Who have been your closest friends throughout the years?
In primary school, Colegio Mimó, Calle I and Calle 15, Vedado, La Habana, my friends were Enrique Toraño Díaz, who died very young, when I was7 or 8 years old, Alfredo Labarrere, who was black, son of a diplomat from Haiti, a very good and decent family who lived at Avenida Paseo and Calle 3, Vedado, La Habana, and also Domingo Abreu, who lived farther away, in Centro Habana, as well as the brothers Guy, Francisco and Pablo Pérez-Cisneros, whos father was at the time, Ambassador of Cuba in London and participated in the promulgation of the Declaration of Human Rights of 1947, also Nicolás Rodríguez Trinidad, nephew of the very rich Diego Trinidad, owner of Trinidad y Hermanos cigarettes and Radio Cadena Azul radio station, Adolfo Plazaola a boarding student from Oriente with the marked accent of that region.
After Don Pablo retired and Colegio Mimó closed and I went to Colegio Trelles for my third, fourth and fifth years of Bachillerato --secondary school-- in 1955, I made the friends who lasted during a lifetime. Classmates such as Otto González Penichet, Enrique Almagro Rodríguez, Raúl Fernández de Castro y Estrugo, Laureano Pequeño Velo, Luis Arce y García-Roche. Raúl, whom we called Uti, had a girlfriend named Zoraida, a redhead whose older sister was dating Carlos Francisco Suárez, who promptly adopted our group, began hanging out with us, who gathered mostly at Uti's house, the largest of all of ours, a twelve-bedroom, seven bathroom Spanish style house in Calle J between Calle 21 and Calle 23, Vedado.
Otto and Arce remained in Cuba after the revolution, albeit they behaved in very different ways. Otto, an orphan whose parents had died when an airplane of Cubana de Aviación travelling from La Habana to Madrid collided with a USAF fighter in mid-air, was very loyal to the uncle that had raised him and his brother Lionel, a cardiologist Named Noel, whom with the revolution had become Fidel Castro's cardiologist and a Professor at the University of Havana, helped all his friends he could, and although we argued, always remained friends, he wrote me and asked me to receive and help a mutual friend, David Villafaña when he arrived in Miami, whom I took to the bank to cash a $300 check Otto had given him, money he used to travel to St. Paul Minnesota and eventually became a Chemical Engineer.
Arce was another matter altogether. He was resentful and his envy showed forth right away, he dressed in olive green fatigues and went searching for "Batistianos" including the father of Berta Solaún, a friend of Uti's sister Liana, whose family was notorious as part of the Batista regime, but whose hospitality we had all enjoyed. It was sad to see that, the same happened to another friend from the equestrian team, Antonio Jacomino, a real nice and very friendly guy, whose father was a Minister during the Batista government, but against whom many people turned, mostly from envy.
Uti and family came into exile, but all of them moved to Tucson Arizona, where Uti died of a heart attack while working at a gold mine in 1967. Almagro had an uncle, also named Humberto Rodríguez, who was a Cuban diplomat at the Brussels Cuban Embassy, so at the beginning of the revolution, before Europe required visas for Cubans, he went to Camagüey, boarded a ship and went to Brussels, where we visited him several times and he visited us at Bad Kreuznach as well. He later moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he worked for the University of New Mexico and where he died of complications of diabetes many years later.
Laureano Pequeño Velo was short in stature, very intense guy, he first fought in clandestine activities against the Batista regime, soon after the triumph of the revolution began doing the same against the Castro regime, which landed him in prison. He was a "Plantado" or refused "revolutionary rehabilitation" to wear prosan uniforms as a common delinquent, demanded to be recognized as political prisoner, which landed him as the subject of terrific tortures, related by his fellow prisoner Armando Valladares in his book "Against All Hope"
https://www.amazon.com/Against-All-Hope-Memoir-Castros/dp/1893554198/ref=sr_1_1?hvadid=409942944438&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9012343&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=3253525784305126945&hvtargid=kwd-352350035&hydadcr=24659_11410797&keywords=against+all+hope&qid=1686238347&sr=8-1
Pequeño was imprisoned for 15 years, eventually came to Miami, he had married Cuqui, his teenage sweetheart,, in Miami he and his entire family came to visit us every other Sunday, when he cut our lawn, their children and Cuqui enjoyed the swimming pool, they stayed for dinner and we renewed our close friendship.
In Miami I made good friends too, first in Western and Southern, Aniceto Abascal, Jim Hemphill, Gary Quintilio, Gene Gust and Tom Taylor; later at The Travelers, Don Ewing, Pancho Villaronga, Panchito Cabeza, Phil Webb and Mike Groff.
After we opened Select Insurance Agency in 1972, a new set of friends ensued, among them Pepe and Elsa Álvarez, Rodolfo and Luisa Valdés-Díaz, Fernando Giménez, Indalecio Patalllo, John Soto and others.
When we bought the apartment at Arlen Beach Condominium in 1998, a new set of good friends emerged, such as Pepe and Marta Villarruel, Ramón y Alicia Moral, Angel and Estela Socarrás, Roberto and Kelita Junco, Jorge and Tania Gata, René Boan, Gilberto and Eneida Navarro and others.
When we moved to Fort White and attended Saint Madeleine Catholic Church at High Springs, good friends proliferated, such as Jim and Barbara Fogarty, Mike and Annie Wilson, Bill and Gloria McCarthy, Enrique and Cathy Arias, Doug and Maggie Smith, Carlos and Carmen González, and others.
Back