When you are a child, curiosity appears at any new event, a common element in those who are new to life. This is what happened once with Laura, the little girl who was born along the road to San Luis, who just after learning to read, learned that her home address said cooperative. Jose Antonio Labradorbefore which the question was imposed on his great-grandfather who was that person and if he was related to her.
Because she was born at this time, Laura could not recognize that name that appeared on her minor card, but it worried her to know, so her great-grandfather’s anecdotes were the first lessons to anchor, from that day, what she can know better today.
FROM THE FIELD OF PINAREÑO TO A BARRACK IN SANTIAGO
“Her parents were peasants like us,” they told the girl. From the voice of those who she lived closely those years, she learned that she had passed the third grade of primary school with magnificent grades when she abandoned rural school to join agricultural work, forced by economic necessity.
He also learned that his mother died when he was barely seven years old, and José Antonio Labrador moved to the municipality of Artemisa, at that time part of the province of Pinar del Río; but if something caught the attention of the investigator, it was that during the rapporteurship his great-grandfather mentioned that he had participated in the assault on the Moncada Garrison, since there is not a Cuban pioneer who does not treasure the Moncadistas as heroes of such greatness.
They say that in July 1953, his father set up a humble little bodeguita in Pinar del Río, with the idea that “Toño”, as José Antonio was known, would go to work with him, but he told him without many details: “Old man, I have a responsible business and my duty is to finish it and fulfill it.”
Then came the eve of Santa Ana, a busy early morning for the carnival in Santiago de Cuba. There, 135 combatants, dressed in army uniforms and led by Fidel Castro, established an attack plan.
Much has been written about these events, there is various information with data, documents, photos, as well as testimonies told by its protagonists. But if something is repeated on each page, it is the courage, heroism and human condition of the assailants, who, by the way, were less in relation to the number of men and weapons, favorable to the forces of the tyrant Fulgencio Batista.
José Antonio Labrador did not fall in combat, according to the consulting professor José María Sánchez Fernández, in an interview with Guerrillawho says that he was assassinated after the attack on the Moncada Barracks.
Regarding these events of July 26, the doctor in Historical Sciences also reported that from all over the country, eight Cubans fell in the actions of their own struggle and 51 were brutally murdered by Batista’s tyranny, “they were taken from the hospitals where they were treated, some were injected with formaldehyde into their veins, others were killed in the elevators themselves or even on the beds of the health institutions.”
Fulgencio Batista wanted to see blood. Professor Sánchez recounts that a butcher shop was carried out and that the dictator, upon learning of the wounded, ordered that for every scratch on his soldiers he wanted 10 of ours dead “and they went out to murder at close range,” he said.
IN THE CARLOS MANUEL DE CÉSPEDES BARRACKS, ALSO A PINAREÑO
As the facts must be analyzed in time and space, as Sánchez Fernández suggests, in the context of 1953 the westernmost province stretched from Guanajay to Guane, not a few bibliographic sources cite the more than 30 people from Pinar del Río who participated in the assaults on July 26.
However, Juan Carlos Rodríguez, City Historian, referred to the peasant Toño and the worker Lazaro Hernandez Arroyo as the only ones with roots in the current Vueltabajera capital; the first, located at kilometer four of the road to Viñales and the second, in a humble home in the well-known Oriente neighborhood, a community that today honors him with his name.
Sánchez Fernández refers that, like José Antonio, Lázaro was assassinated, but he was outside the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks, in Bayamo.
He studied at public school No. 10 in this city, now known as Gabriela Mistral, and like most poor children he had to drop out and start working to support the family economy.
At the age of 12, he began working as an apprentice at the Careaga candy store, located on Justo Hidalgo street, and later he had to move the sweets to the front of the Milanés theater where he sold them, all for a meager salary.
Consulted bibliographies emphasize that at the age of 15 and with an enormous desire to improve economically, he moved to Havana where one of his brothers lived, but he soon became convinced that the precarious situation for the poor was the same anywhere in the country. It was not until the beginning of 1947 when he began to work as a mason’s laborer and soon after, due to his effort and dedication, he mastered the trade perfectly.
It is around this time that he meets Pablo Agüero Guedes, who was also a martyr in the assault on the Bayamo barracks, and they establish strong ties of friendship.
When the coup took place on March 10, 1952, Lázaro tried to find contacts and guidance, thus becoming a member of one of the cells of the July 26 Movement in Marianao, led by Hugo Camejo Valdés, also a martyr. These young people, in addition to participating in strikes and demonstrations, began to practice shooting on farms near the city of Havana.
Some texts about the time cite July 23, 1953 as the day that his friend Pablo told him that a great practice was going to take place and he supposed that it would be outside of Havana, that he had to prepare conditions. Lázaro says goodbye to his relatives and tells the foreman of his work that he needs to visit Pinar del Río. Together with other cellmates, he headed for Bayamo and went directly to the house they had rented.
There, the youths are organized into five groups in charge of attacking the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Barracks in Bayamo. This action, led by the top leadership of the July 26 Movement and commanded by Ñico López, was synchronized with the assault on the Moncada Barracks. Their mission was to deactivate the forces that were in said barracks and form an advance group next to the Cauto River, and thus prevent the support of the forces of the tyranny that were in Santiago de Cuba on July 26, 1953.
After the failure of the action, together with a small number of companions, they manage to leave the city and reach one of the rice fields. Hunger, thirst and fatigue punished them, so they decide to rest in an abandoned hut, where they are betrayed and discovered by the henchmen of tyranny.
… AND THERE WAS A FREE COUNTRY, WITHOUT THE PRESENCE OF TYRANTS
The sad panorama that clothed the country was common for many Cubans, but mainly for families like Toño and Lázaro’s, our Commander in Chief would rightly state in 1976 from these lands that “…in capitalism, no region of the country was more forgotten and no Cuban population was the object of greater indifference, and we could even say contempt.”
This scenario was the driving force in both to go out and walk with the spirit of justice. They placed themselves at the forefront of the fight for the true independence of Cuba and led, together with their companions, that assault remembered forever in history.
The girl Laura grew up and learned from her teachers at each school stage the fragments of history that gave magnitude to her Cuba. She knew of each of the assailants, of those killed, the survivors, the defendants, in short, of the many heroes recorded in the Moncada feat; That is why she continues to evoke, from her little piece of land, the sacrifice and worth of those who faced a tyrant with the desire to see the Homeland free of him.
