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It's
just a journey, Saul,
the other isn't
true
 •
GERARDO Hernández Nordelo, Hero of
the Republic of Cuba, has sent a heartfelt message
to his friend Saul Landau, the outstanding U.S.
filmmaker and journalist, who is currently facing a
serious illness. Saul visited Gerardo on a number of
occasions, together with the actor Danny Glover.
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Gerardo with his
friends Danny Glover
and Saul Landau during a prison visit. |
For his merits and history of
solidarity, Landau was decorated on August 7 with
the Friendship Medal, granted by the Council of
State at the request of the Cuban Friendship
Institute.
"It isn’t true, Saul, don’t repeat
it. I know, other people are saying it too, but it
isn’t true. There is pain in Carmen’s voice when she
answers the telephone, but it can’t be true.
You will tell me it’s true, that old
friends have called you and others have come from
far away to see you, that your own body is shouting
it at you, that the honors have already begun… It
doesn’t matter, I know it isn’t true. How can it be
true, with so many people who admire and love you?
Every time we speak, Adriana [Gerardo’s wife] asks
me to call you again. (And if this doesn’t mean much
to you, that’s because you don’t know how she
defends every one of our telephone minutes tooth and
nail.) Everyone is asking her about you, everyone,
but they know it’s only a journey, that the other
isn’t true.
A journey to where? I don’t really
know. In this, as in baseball, it’s very difficult
to come to an agreement. It is a journey from which
many do not return, but you will, you are one of the
privileged. You will be here every time Danny [Glover]
visits me, in Cuba when we Five are reunited. You
will come back every time something is read from
your books, or at screenings of your documentaries.
How can you not be here when someone asks who filmed
those images of Fidel pushing the jeep stuck in the
mud of that road? Or the many others when you toured
half of Cuba with him in ’68? Do you believe you can
be absent when someone sees Will the Real terrorist
Please Stand Up, and finally understands the case of
the Five? Don’t even talk about that, compadre. You
will always be here when the interview with Salvador
Allende is seen, perhaps the only or the most
important one to be made in English, and when
someone discovers those still unpublished images of
Fidel, talking in his house with Harry Belafonte.
It is just a journey, Saul, the
other isn’t true. You will come when someone wants
to know everything about the car bomb which killed
Letelier and Moffitt right in the middle of
Washington DC. When they want to understand about
Chiapas, or about the maquiladoras. When they read
your poems, or your always accurate articles. When
they mention your Friendship Medal from Cuba, your
Bernardo O’Higgins from Chile, your Emmy, and your
many other prizes and
decorations. You will always come
when I tell someone how I had the privilege of
knowing you, of learning with you, of enjoying your
sense of humor, and when they ask me to whom I owe
my brotherhood with Danny Glover. You will always be
with your family, with your friends, with your
students.
Of course it isn’t true, Saul, I
know it’s just a journey. What I do not know is if
then we will be able to communicate, and for that I
don’t want to wait until you leave to say to you,
Thank you for everything, my brother, it was an
honor to spend time with you. In the name of the
Five, of our family members, and of so many good
Cubans: Thank you!
I am not going to deny that we are
sad, but at the same time happy to know that, in
your case, when it is, it will only be a journey,
because you were able to earn that privilege.
I am going to call you again very
soon, but now you know, don’t repeat the other to
me, because it isn’t true, Saul. It isn’t true that
you are going to die.
Gerardo Hernández Nordelo
•
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Vigil for the Cuban Five outside the
White House
WASHINGTON.—A vigil outside the White House has been
convened for September 12, the 15th anniversary of
the incarceration of the five Cuban anti-terrorist
fighters sentenced in a rigged trial in Miami.
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“We
will celebrate the best birthday of all together in
our eternal Cuba”
WASHINGTON.—Ramón Labañino, one of the five Cuban
anti-terrorists sentenced to long prison terms in
the United States, affirmed optimism in relation to
his return to the country in a message to his
compañero Fernando González, who celebrated his
50th birthday on August 18.
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"I will die as I
have lived"
Watercolors by Antonio Guerrero exhibited in U.S.
THE
exposition "Me muero como viví" (I Will Die as I
Have Lived), composed of 15 watercolors painted by
Antonio (Tony) Guerrero, a decorated Hero of the
Republic of Cuba, was inaugurated May 15 in the
headquarters of Casa Maryland, a Latino community
organization established in 1985, among the most
important of its kind in the state.
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