The wave of assassinations and terror that took over the eastern region in December 1956, also reached the Cacumuco youth committed to the liberation of the island. Gilberto González Rojas (Papi) was one of the victims of the events known as Bloody Easter.
The saddest dawn
Elvia Luisa adjusts his shirt, as she always does before going out, especially today when everyone is looking their best. She smoothes Gilberto Ramón's hair, who, at eight years old, accompanies them everywhere, and takes little Marbelis del Carmen by the hand. They leave the house laughing. In the atmosphere, the halo of happiness that always accompanies the nights of Easter, is mixed with the uncertainty that has spread throughout the region, and the threats he has received in recent days to leave the city.
Despite this, he insists that nothing will ruin this night of celebration with his wife, children and friends. The conversations will revolve around the need to support the guerrillas, the recent crimes ordered by Fermín Cowler, and the usual, family, work.
Precisely because of the work they leave early, around midnight they arrive home and two hours later he is back on his feet, because his shift at the railroad station, where he works as a telegrapher, begins at two in the morning. He crosses the city park without suspecting that, under the cover of darkness, murderous hands are lurking behind him.
They shoot him in the back, a form of killing worthy of cowardly men. The name of Gilberto Gonzalez Rojas is inscribed among the last murders of the long list of crimes planned by the bestial hitman Fermin Cowler, as a bloody Easter gift to the territory of Holguin.
Papi, as everybody called him, had turned 31 years old on the seventh of that month. In his short life he had had many aspirations, but the real economic circumstances of his family did not allow him to realize any of them. Always a lover of painting, he had to make do with manual arts classes in elementary school, because not even in his wildest dreams would his parents have been able to afford to pay for his plastic arts studies. When concluding his primary studies he wanted to enter the School of Commerce of Holguin, but the lack of money did not allow it.
So he had to settle for the job of laborer in the railroad, but the determination and discipline that he put in what he did, made that he was promoted quickly to telegrapher.
This chain of unfinished dreams led him to quickly understand the need to collaborate to transform the reality of Cubans. With that premise he joined the Orthodox Party and joined the first cell of the 26th of July Movement constituted in Cacocum.
He soon became part of the advance guard of the same and an active militant, who could be seen organizing and leading rallies, demonstrations, sabotage and propaganda. Such was his activity that Batista's assassins did not delay in beginning to persecute him and warn him.
On December 12, 1956 the threats began to materialize. That day he was arrested together with Tomás Mulet Guerrero and Idilio Batista Fuentes, accused of burning El Puente Negro, in the railroad line that unites Cacocum with Holguín. He was taken to the old jail of the city, tried in cause # 64 of the year and declared guilty.
On the 23rd he was released under a series of conditions and threats. The leaders of the M-26-7 ordered him to leave the city due to the eminent danger to his life, in days when the demon of crime filled the streets of Holguin with pain. Papi refused, arguing that his contribution at that moment was crucial so that the wave of murders would not weaken the Movement in the area. But three days later, in the early morning of December 26, 1956, the Movement would lose one of its best men in Cacocum.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
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