The forging of a character

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La forja de un carácter

This could well be the story of a man who has forged himself in character from perseverance and overcoming.

A life marked from before birth by the stubbornness of the helmsman of destiny who wanted a blind woman, back in Chambas, to change her mind, due to her disability, and decide to procreate her only child at 41. The polytechnic student who claimed an injustice in his group and since then was captured as a political leader; or the times he tried to leave school and start working, which would have almost certainly led him down paths different from his current reality.

Perhaps the mythological Moiras did not want him to have an existence more focused on the individual, when his luck was to give himself more to others. Julio Heriberto Gómez Casanova, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in the municipality of Ciego de Ávila, a Cuban loaded with responsibilities, but also with affection, goes to bed every day in tune with the programming of Radio Enciclopedia and gets up at five in the morning to the rhythm from Making Radio, from Radio Rebelde.

That when he comes home, often late because of his work, it is to do what he has called a kind of ritual: spending time with his family. At night, he goes out in sportswear, equipped with a telephone, headphones and a playlist that invariably includes Buena Fe, Ricardo Arjona, Serrat, Sabina, Silvio Rodríguez, Melendi, although more recent songs by some of them do not catch him as before, but not without disdaining the music of the moment, even certain reggaeton tracks, which beyond their lyrics energize him with their music.

A fan of the Van Van, a very bad singer and even worse dancer, as he defines himself, Julio can be seen with ease in an exchange with the peasants in the furrow as well as in front of a packed theater.

Nevertheless, it was not always like that, he says, about that boy, raised in the humble neighborhood of El Triángulo, who found it unspeakably difficult to address himself on a public stage, in his beginnings as a cadre of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) in 2001 little or nothing left.

Since then, he has also passed through the National Bureau of the UJC, as a member that attended the sphere of young workers and combatants from 2015 to 2018. “That was a tremendous experience, because in the academic order, of knowledge of the activity, that of least prepared I was. The rest of my classmates had been national leaders of the Federation of High School Students and the Federation of University Students, and that stage there forced me to be at their level, I had the opportunity to travel to five or six countries and interact with delegations of young people from the left, but also from the right”.

His return to the province in partisan functions was as organizer of the head municipality and in July 2019, he was promoted to first secretary. An activity that demands high doses of sacrifice and that absorbs many hours of the day.

However, to the challenge that carrying such a responsibility entails, Julio says that his personal experience has helped him a lot. In addition, it is not for less when, as a teenager, during the hard years of the Special Period, he undertook agricultural work, without neglecting his studies; In fact, he recounts how, when he received a scholarship in 1992, there were 67 students in his classroom and only seven graduated.

Then came his participation in five sugar harvests, two as a student and three as a teacher, "this prepared me for life in an extraordinary way, despite my lack of knowledge, since it forged in me the sacrifice, the industriousness, which also I learned from my parents."

Family and friendship are two things that he values ​​highly in life; His wife, his eldest daughter and little Julitín, whom he loves madly, are there. He cannot prevent the feeling from appearing in his eyes when, in the middle of the conversation, he remembers the recently deceased childhood friend or evokes the mother figure as a paradigm and support at all times, despite the gales of existence.

He remembers that his mother forced him several times to continue his studies, her efforts to turn him into a good man in constant improvement. “She has known how to grow in the face of difficulties, raising me at the age she had me, with my father working far from home, and without leaving his job as leader of the ANCI (Cuban National Association of the Blind) in Chambas, of the which, at 84 years old, is part; it's amazing what it still manages to push and do.

How for me the tasks are going to be something impossible, if for my mother, being blind, they never were?

That vocation for politics comes in Julio, he says, from the influence received by the young people of his generation, from the love he acquired for the revolutionary process almost without realizing it.

His mandate at the head of the main municipality has been marked almost from the beginning by the confrontation with COVID-19 and the shortcomings that have repercussions in the social sphere, since the necessary budgets do not exist at this stage. “It is about prioritizing fundamental issues, with many dissatisfactions; I always think of the Buena Fe song with that of: 'more what could be done than what was wanted', but with the joy of things that have gone well".

He also says that strong battles remain: continue to strengthen the improvement of health indicators and the maternal and child program, achieve stability every month in blood donations, strengthen the work of political and mass organizations, further promote food production ; All tasks aimed at satisfying the expectations of prosperity and development of the people, which must be achieved with or without a blockade, on that route marked out by Díaz-Canel to resist and advance.

At 42 years old, Julito —so they call him from the affection and admiration of those who know him—, is very active on the Internet social networks, a tool that shows that most of the cadres do work and a lot in pursuit of solving the problems of the population, in addition to becoming a stage to defend the Cuban social system from manipulative and misleading visions of reality.

—And until when politics?

—That is until the Revolution decides. Directing is not attractive and sometimes it becomes unpleasant, but there are moments of great satisfaction when you know that you fulfilled a task well and they also congratulate you for it, even if you don't work for it.

In these years I have added many cadres to political work. That creates a commitment with them, that you cannot fail them, and also with those to whom I have transmitted ideas and principles of the Revolution.

“When I no longer direct, I would like to continue my career in Agronomy, with which I am in love. I finished my master's degree in Agricultural Sciences and I have defined the topic of my doctorate. I have not wanted to disassociate myself because that makes you grow, forces you to investigate, to prepare yourself”.