My intuition as a journalist told me that a news story was taking place very close to the Loma del Muerto neighborhood, about three and a half kilometers from the town of Buenaventura.
I stopped in front of a house, said hello, and had to do it again. The man of the house, sitting in the porch, was hooked on the radio. He also suffers from deafness, which prevents him from hearing well. Caridad Rodríguez Balanza came to his aid. After my introduction, she invited me in and talked. "As a family," she said.
"You can see him there with his little radio. From the moment Radio Juvenil starts until the station closes, he's always "on," listening to your programming and news. He's a lifelong listener."
[Ramón is a radio lover and confesses that he is a loyal listener of Radio Juvenil] Ramón is a radio lover and confesses that he is a loyal listener of Radio Juvenil
You should know, my internet friend, that Ramón is not from these lands of western Holguín. "I'm from Santiago de Cuba. Over time, we moved to Holguín because my wife had passed away, and then this daughter of mine, Caridad, who lives here, took me in and takes care of me as a father, an elderly person, should be treated. I have other children who live in Santiago, in Villa Clara," he explains.
“During my time as a worker, I was tasked with the construction of several dams in Santiago, Holguín, Las Tunas, and Villa Clara. One of my proudest experiences is having worked in Hydraulic Resources, in this job as a crane mechanic under the command of Commanders of the Revolution Juan Almeyda Bosque and Guillermo García. They helped forge my revolutionary spirit,” he tells me, showing me a picture of our Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro, whom he considers a true brother and to whom he remained always loyal.
Caridad chimes in, “He's a loving father; he always looked out for us despite his constant and hard work. He was always an outstanding worker, recognized on several occasions.”
[Ramón Rodríguez and his daughter Caridad.] Ramón Rodríguez and his daughter Caridad.
Rodríguez Quert participated in the construction of the Olympic Village and the Revolution Plaza in the Hero City. "I gave my all in both projects, and there I met José Ramón Fernández. On that occasion, comrade Esteban Lazo pinned the Armando Mestre medal on my chest for 25 uninterrupted years in the sector. Lazo asked me to go to Moa, where the earthworks for the dam began, and then to the construction of the Guirabo dam in Holguín. I was always on the front lines in all of them, and that's what we revolutionaries are all about."
Ramón recalls that in his younger years, back in San Antonio de Los Baños, he wanted to be an aviator. “Everything was going great until the altitude test came up. I got dizzy, I think my blood pressure went up, and I fell. All of this affected my hearing, and I said to myself, 'This is it for the future Santiago aviator.' And finally, I settled on this job as a crane mechanic,” he explains with surprising fluency and memory, especially given his advanced age, which is almost ninety years old.
I don’t know why I got the idea of stopping at the home of Ramón and Caridad, father and daughter, it seems that the detective instinct that we journalists develop advised me to stop, there was news there, and more than that, a life story of a man who confessed to me when he was very young, having been very close to the Plenary Hall of the Eastern Court where the trial of the Moncada attackers was held in which Fidel bravely presented his plea of self-defense known to posterity as History Will Absolve Me, “from there I forged the conviction of being faithful to Fidel and my Revolution.”
