L.A. Cubans Honor a Hero, Talk of Freedom in Havana

On Jan. 28, 1976, members of the Los Angeles Cuban community gathered in Echo Park for the unveiling of a bronze bust of Jose Marti, the Cuban poet, journalist and revolutionary who is embraced as “the apostle” of his country’s battle for independence from Spain.

Every Jan. 28 since, local Cuban immigrants--most of them refugees from the Communist government of Fidel Castro--have gathered near Marti’s likeness, both to honor his birthday and to talk about what his fight for freedom means to them.

With walls tumbling down in Eastern Europe, Sunday’s celebration was a little more hopeful than most.

“This year it is different because of what is happening in the Communist bloc countries in Europe,” said Gina Perez, whose husband, Abel, is editor and publisher of 20 de Mayo, a local Cuban newspaper. “We are hoping that communism in Cuba is getting weaker and weaker. We think that our liberation will be soon.”

Said Yoel Borges, a member of the California chapter of Junta Patriotica Cubana, which organized Sunday’s event: “We are trying to produce in Cuba what is happening in Europe. We are looking to eliminate Castro’s (allies) and the Communist Party from our country.”

Marti is revered as much in Communist Cuba as he is by Cuban expatriates. Havana’s airport is named for him, and his tomb is a national shrine.

The birthday celebration (Marti was born in 1853) drew a crowd of several hundred, many waving small Cuban flags and holding placards that proclaimed, “Cuba Next.” After a brief parade and a ceremony in which the participants laid flowers before the Marti statue, the crowd heard Borges and other Cuban community leaders.

The speakers’ strident calls for democracy brought cheers. The crowd included Pedro Baez, a nurse and fiction writer who came to the United States a decade ago in the Mariel boat lift, and Rene Gonzalez Herrero, a 72-year-old former captain in the Cuban military who immigrated in 1986.

Herrero, who was imprisoned when Castro came to power in 1959 and stayed in jail until he was allowed to leave Cuba, lives in Bell. He soaked up the sun and the speeches in a folding chair set up beneath a palm tree. Through an interpreter, he said he attended the rally because he wants to see “freedom in this year.”

Also on hand was Rene Lazaro of Burbank, an amateur film maker who said he discovered Herrero while researching a movie he is making on Cuban political prisoners. “Most of the Cuban people for the past 29 years have been saying, ‘Next year, Castro will be out of power,’ ” he said. “I feel that someday, the government will give up and step down.”