‘Hart broke down barriers, gave hope for the future’

Militant/Silberman

Andrés Gómez, leader of Cuban-American group Antonio Maceo Brigade, speaking at Feb. 18 book presentation. Front row center, Cuban Minister of Culture Abel Prieto.

BY JONATHAN SILBERMAN AND MARTÍN KOPPEL
HAVANA — For Cuban-Americans like himself, said Andrés Gómez, encountering Armando Hart in the mid-1970s broke down barriers and gave them hope for the future.

Gómez was speaking from the audience following the presentation of Hart’s book Aldabonazo at the Havana book fair. He is the coordinator of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, a Cuban-American organization that opposes Washington’s policies against the Cuban Revolution.

In 1977, he said, he took part in a trip to Cuba of 55 young Cuban-Americans, organized by the newly founded Antonio Maceo Brigade. It was the first such group to be invited by the revolutionary government since 1959.

“We had left Cuba as children with parents who had rejected the revolution,” Gómez said. Because of that history, the trip was controversial, both among Cubans in the United States and among many on the island.

Armando Hart chaired one of the discussions the visiting youth took part in. “I asked whether it would ever be possible for people like us to return to Cuba to live — something that was not allowed at the time,” Gómez said.

Hart replied with a story about the children of his own brother, Enrique, who died fighting in the revolutionary struggle. In the early days following the triumph of the revolution, Hart became very close with his brother’s two young sons. One day they were gone. Their mother had taken them to the United States, and he’d had no contact with them for years.

“Hart told us he had always hoped that some day, like us, they’d want to return to Cuba,” Gómez recalled. “I’ll never forget his response and the impact it had on us.”

In subsequent years the Antonio Maceo Brigade organized many more trips to Cuba.