Justina Temozán Bernal -  interviewed by her granddaughter Yoamaris
She is 85 last birthday, Black, Christian, descendant of Haitians
from a poor family, the youngest of 6 brothers and sisters who lived with their mother in La Curva, in Holguin Province
Out of necessity, to help her mother, she began working at age 8, harvesting coffee beans...
J.  I spent 3 or 4 years harvesting coffee until I got tired of it and started to sell breakfasts.
Y¿¿?? (she could see from my face that I didn't understand.)
J.  Yes, I sold breakfast during harvest time to the sugarcane workers and the coffee pickers; I sold little turnovers, coffee with milk, fried food, and sweets.  I had to get up at 4 in the morning and I finished selling at 9.
Y. Who made those things?  How much $ did you make?
J.  Well, I made them, I went to Cueta and bought butter, flour, fried fish, milk, which used to sell for 10 cents a liter.  I bought coffee in a little envelope that said Oquendo and made coffee with milk with it.  I continued until I was 16, when I was placed (as a servant) in Cueto.
Y. what did that mean - placed?
J.  Wash and iron in the house of people who had more resources than we did.  I washed, ironed, ran errands, and cleaned the house too, all for 6 pesos a month.
Y.  and what could you do with 6 pesos?
J.  Nothing
Y.  What do you mean nothing?  Couldn't you buy clothing and other things?
J.  Yes.  (smiles)  By luck they were very nice to me and gave me many little gifts, but with 6 pesos I really couldn't do much, well back then things were cheaper, you could buy some little article of clothing or shoes, for example  - a pair of shoes cost 1 peso 80 centavos and would last me 6 or 7 months.  I couldn't support myself with this money but my mother helped me out as much as she could, in reality we helped each other - she took care of animals and my brothers cut cane at harvest time and when it wasn't the sugarcane harvest, they went out to the coffee plantations - my older brothers.
Y.  Oh! so your placement was a way of helping out the family's finances?
J.  Yes, but later I asked for 2 hours off every day in the house where I worked and in this time off I learned to sew and embroider with a person who gave private lessons, who charged me 2 pesos a month.  I continued doing this until I learned to sew and embroider and I left my "placement."
Y.  so you began earning  your own money with what you had learned?
J.  Yes, I was 18 already.  I charged very little but made good clothes; I was able to buy my sewing machine on time with 10 pesos down and 5 pesos a month, paying for it with the same money I made sewing.  I still have that sewing machine.  So that's more or less how my life went.
Y.  did you have any direct connection with the revolutionary struggle.
J.  Yes.  Well, not so direct, but it was my contribution.  about 1956 or 57, I don't remember exactly, I lived in La Curva, close to where Fidel Castro lived in Birán.  The rebels passed through there, near my house, my boyfriend was working with them, driving a jeep.  I began to sew armbands with the symbol of the 26th of July Movement.
Y.  Why did you do this?  Was it secret?  Wasn't it dangerous?  Weren't you frightened, being a woman?
J.  They needed them, they asked me and I made them and sent them to the rebels in the mountains.  The police never found out that I did this, they were Batista's people so it was dangerous but I did it.  And I saw being a woman as an advantage because this knowledge of sewing, which the men lacked, was precisely what I could offer as my contribution to what they were doing; it was my share.  Do you understand?
y.  January 1 1959 arrived - where were you then?
J.  At the time of the triumph of the Revolution I was in Cueto, they broadcast the news on the radio, everyone was pleased, I was sewing, everyone with great joy, they started to jump around in the cane plantation, shouting that the revolution had triumphed, that Batista had fled, there was a lot of happiness in the town, really.
Y.  and what did you do?
J.  I?  I was happy because we knew that the war was ending, or rather that it had ended.
Y.  What then would happen in your life?
J.  I knew that my boyfriend would marry me and that we would come here, to Havana, and that's what happened.
J.   After the triumph of the Revolution, I began to study in night school, near my house, in Gertrudis de Avellaneda in Marianao and I was able to get to 6th grade.  I couldn't keep studying because I started my own family, and also cared for other family members who were frequent visitors but I had the chance - many of my companions continued and got to 9th grade and got good jobs.  At that time with 9th grade you qualified for a good job.  Afterwards my economic situation and stability of the family improved.  I'll tell you - my sons grew up, one went to the Soviet Union to study accounting and the other became a tool and die maker and worked in the Central Toledo.  This is my pride as a mother.  I won't tell you about grandchildren because that's another story, right?

Cuban Medical Internationalism

CUBA SHARES THE LITTLE IT HAS, CARING FOR PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD
When Lucius Walker said, "I don't need a license to love my neighbor,"  some people said "You have lots of neighbors.  Why Cuba?"  and  Lucius said, "Because Cuba is such a good neighbor."

What is it that makes Cuba a good neighbor to so many countries in the world?  Cuba has a policy of internationalism.  Cuba believes that solidarity means sharing what you have, not what's left over.  Over the years, millions of people in the world have reason to be grateful to Cuba, perhaps after their sight was restored by removing cataracts in Operación Milagro, perhaps when a Cuban doctor went to their remote village where local doctors wouldn't practice and cared for people in a way that expressed solidarity and community, not charity.  Perhaps because Cuba fought to free Africa, they might say, as Nelson Mandela did (thanking Cuba for the defeat of the South-African mercenaries at Cuito Cuanvale), " The decisive defeat of the apartheid aggressors broke the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressors! The defeat of the apartheid army was an inspiration to the struggling people inside South Africa!"  

Lázaro Ostelaza Peña, volunteer in Angola (2nd from right)

The time of Cuban assistance with armed struggle has passed.  Now when people think of Cuban internationalist cooperation, they think of medical care, of Cuba's medical cooperation, which over the last 55 years has been present in 117 countries with more than 160,000 professionals.
  Cuba's medical missions began with a provision of aid to Chile after an earthquake in 1960. In the 1970s and ’80s it offered wartime assistance to South Africa, Algeria, Zaire, Congo and Ghana. More recently, Cuban doctors went to Sri Lanka after the 2004 tsunami and treated victims of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan and the 2010 quake in Haiti. In 2013, Cuba sent 4,000 doctors to remote rural areas of Brazil. Cuba offered assistance to the U.S. in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but the offer was rejected.

A recent example is the Cuban medical brigade in Nepal, which  cared for  thousands of patients in 2015,  after the 7.9  earthquake that devastated regions of that country.  The 49 person brigade, part of the Henry Reeve international contingent specializing in disasters and major epidemics, arrived in Katmandu just 2 weeks after the earthquake and collaborated with Nepali doctors and other health professionals in various regions of the country to deliver services in mobile clinics.
The Henry Reeve medical brigade in West Africa, totaling about 250 Cuban  doctors and nurses, worked for six months of providing direct care for patients with Ebola.  Two members of the brigade died of malaria during their period in Africa; in addition to their heroic sacrifice, this points out that malaria, without making headlines, kills almost one million people annually in Africa.  The Cuban Medical Brigade in West Africa was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

On the 2016 Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba we had the good fortune to hear from 3 doctors who took part in the struggle to save people from Ebola.
One of them was Dr. Jorge Juan Delgado, deputy director of the Central Unit of Medical Cooperation and head of the brigade that fought against ebola in Sierra Leone, who said there are currently 49,500  Cuban health workers in 62 countries.  Two younger doctors, Dayron Ramos and Enrique Betancourt, who were on the front lines in pediatric units in Sierra Leone and Liberia, spoke of their experiences.  
Dayron as a child had dreamed of becoming a doctor and doing medical aid overseas.  He had just finished a shift when his director asked if he would volunteer to care for patients with Ebola.  He joked that perhaps it was fatigue that made him say yes.  He was assigned to a pediatric unit, where initially 9 out of 10 child patients died.  IV treatment, even for hydration, was prohibited due to the risk of needlesticks to health care workers.  The Cubans worked to change these protocols and, with good supportive care, were able to cut the death rate to "just" 35%.  It may be hard for even the most experienced doctors to realize the impact of losing 3 or 4 child patients out of every 10, the exhaustion of wearing the elaborate personal protection equipment in the heat and yet the anxiety of worrying if this was the day you contaminated yourself with the deadly virus.

Enrique Betancourt, volunteer against Ebola in West Africa

Enrique Betancourt was also in a pediatric unit. He is the son of Enrique Betancourt  Nenínger, the revolutionary who began as a young literacy worker after the revolution, studied medicine, carried out many internationalist missions as a doctor, finally becoming the personal physician of Moisés Zamora Machel, president of Mozambique, and dying with him in 1986 when their plane was  blown up in an assassination.   Enrique's mother is a Cuban nurse who also carried out international medical work in Africa.   When he was asked how his family felt about his volunteering for the care of Ebola patients, he responded, "That  was how I was raised."  "Así me criaron."

Literacy Volunteer - Campaña de Alfabetización

Carmen en Realengo, con su linterna

Maria del Carmen Calderón, age 13 in 1961, wanted to go teach literacy with the Conrado Benitez Brigade.  They passed out forms in school - she was in 6th grade - that parents had to sign to give consent.  At first her parents refused because she was very young and also asthmatic, but  some of her cousins who also wanted to be literacy volunteers finally convinced her parents to agree.  They thought she would be working near Yaguajay ( in Santi Spiritu Province) where they lived, but the girls were sent first to Varadero to do a one week training course.  There they learned how to use the teaching cards and manuals that would teach from and also how to light their lanterns.  Since they were going to places without electricity, they would need light in order to teach, and the lanterns became the symbol of the literacy volunteers as well as a necessity. They were also given their uniforms.  Twenty-one girls and an adult teacher were sent to Realengo, part of San Ramón Sugar Plantation, in Oriente Province.  They traveled to Bayamo by train, then by bus the rest of the way, over several days.  They were distributed among the 50 or 60 households of Realengo; Carmen was sent to a married couple with 3 children.  Because of the rebels in the mountains who descended at night to threaten and destroy, the literacy teaching was done by day only, and at night they did not light their lanterns or wear their uniforms.  If the counter-revolutionaries - the rebels or bandits - had come the couple planned to say that Carmen was a relative staying with them.  The food they ate was mostly balls of cornmeal, boiled.  Carmen says she was a slender girl without much interest in food, and she didn't mind the diet.  What was important to her was the affection they offered her.  When she left, it was a sad farewell, with everyone crying.  Over the years she stayed in contact with the family through news and letters carried by people traveling in the region.  The married couple are still alive, both over 90 now.  One of their sons got an engineering degree, but he was killed in a car accident.  The surviving two live in San Ramon.

Con la familia campesina

Carmen was there from April to the 22nd of December.  She taught 5 people to read and write, all adults, the youngest of them 17.  Her parents came to visit her twice during these months, bringing things to eat.

On December 22, all the literacy volunteers met with Fidel in the Plaza of the Revolución in Havana, and Cuba was declared a country free of illiteracy.  All the volunteers shouted, " Fidel, Fidel, what do we need to do now?"  and he responded,  "Now what you have to do is study."  They all received scholarships.  In January the schools opened.  Carmen gave up her scholarship in Havana because she had asthma attacks; she studied to be a lab technician with a hematology specialty in Santa Clara and did this work for many years.

Carmen hoy, en su casa

It was a great experience, she says.  It gave an opportunity to meet new people, see the difficult conditions of their lives and the desires they had to learn and to improve.

from the Decalogue of the Brigadista ( on the back of the ID card.)
1.  We will honor Cuba teaching reading to the most isolated campesinos.   Marti's slogan is ours: "No martyr dies in vain, no idea is ever lost."

from my interview with Carmen Calderón Navarro, October 2016