It is said that Fernando Gonzalez Llort (one of the Cuban Five held in the United States (U.S.) for fighting terrorism), was a common boy when he was in high school. He was not physically strong, not very tall, but I believe, without seeing a photo by that time that, like, his eyes reveal a responsible, affable and calm person.
Rafael Hojas, journalist from Trabajadores Newspaper, in responsible to tell me I am not far from reality in an interview to Granma Newspaper.
“I met Fernan, as we used to call him, while we were studying in the Isle of Youth. We were students there and shared the same professors, friends and the job in the field… Although we were not in the same grade, the conditions at school helped us be together, no matter the grade we were.”
“He had a peculiar characteristic since then,” Hojas said. “He was very sharp when he talked. He was a serious person, but he was also funny as Cubans are and made jokes, shared with friends and had fun.”
Time passed by and Hojas is convinced that school was very important in the formation of Fernando Gonzalez Llort as a man and good person, and his sharpness has been modelled with time. “It is amazing the things he writes, with the rigor he says them. He has improved a lot since I met him: he is now taller, although she is a short man.”
Either Hojas or Gonzalez Llort took his own course years later. The two friends met again when they finished college.
“We met again by chance in Africa. I remember I was in a mission and we stopped for provisions in a unit in Angola and I heard someone calling “Muñeco!,”- the way was used to call those who had just arrived to the mission. I look around to see if it was with me, although I was the only one with a brand new uniform, when I suddenly saw Fernando Gonzalez Llort greeting me and we talked for a little while.”
“I saw him again on November 1998, in a photo, just two months after his arrest. It was a piece of newspaper from Miami that talked about the imprisonment of the “Cuban spies” and Fernando Gonzalez Llort was slovenly, as if he were mistreated before. He was bearded, uncombed and it was a hard impact to see Fernando in that photo.”
It’s been a long time since then and many things had happened, Hojas complains. To be a journalist has allowed him to join the struggle to inform on the cause of the Cuban Five, but he noted he feels sorry because he had only been able to write.
He said once he was interviewing Fernando’s mother, Magali Llort and he talked to Fernando by phone. It was like a gift. And so he considers a letter his friend Fernando sent him as former classmate and he received it on December 2013, in which, “with a humble gesture,” he thanks Hojas what he was doing in Trabajadores Newspaper in support to the freedom of the Cuban Five”, “when we are the ones who have to thank them,” Hojas stressed.
He now hopes his way back home will be shorter because his friend: Fernando Gonzalez Llort, who had become a Hero “could be the least period possible in an immigration prison, and that he would as soon as possible, enjoy his mother, wife, family and, let’s see when we can meet.”
“In Cuba –he said- we are lucky to have big hearted men, and Fernando Gonzalez Llort is one of them. I do not believe that everybody is ready to give life for nothing in change. That means risks and a great capacity of devotion.” It was perhaps he was not surprised when he saw him in that photo, among those arrested, although it really hurt a lot,” Hojas stressed. But, what he has always known about his friend is that those who are firm with his ideas: “Never backs out!”
