Fidel Castro’s first visit to Contramaestre
The first visit of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro Ruz to Contramaestre has a whole history of historical antecedents. Just 26 years after its foundation, the town has been inhabited and one of the families there has already sent one of his sons, René Fernández Bárzaga, to study at Dolores School in Santiago de Cuba. It was 1939 and his parents, Aquilino and Enma, had high hopes in the decision taken and they were certain.
Fernández Bárzaga achieved satisfactory high school marks, he is an applied young man and he made good friends immediately, one of them called Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, son of a Galician from Birán.
During Aquilino’s visits to Dolores School, René introduces Fidel to Angel and Lina, his parents. Fidel does the same with his parents. Friendship becomes close and very soon old Aquilino invites the boy to spend a few days in Contramaestre. On October 10, 1939 the school plan had three days off, it was a holiday and then the weekend came; so it was the ideal time.
The back seat of Aquilino’s wedge car welcomed the two students. They arrived at the house in the then “San Luis” neighborhood at noon. Immediately lunch was served with a menu to the taste of the house owner. That day Fidel drank water from Contramaestre River and soon he became familiar with Aida, the fourth in chronological order of Enma and Aquino’s five children. They talked a lot in the home courtyard, then went to the “Contramaestre”, Where they bathed their bodies all afternoon.
On October 11, after breakfast, they returned to the “Contramaestre” and visited the so-called “Poza del Diablo” (Devil’s Pond), a site linked to obscure popular legends ranging from impressive lights to fantastic apparitions.
Castro enjoyed the waters of the river, everyone froliced like children, always watched by the attentive Aquino’s eyes. Fidel felt very attracted by the girl, perhaps it was his first love, but not beyond glances, shared affections and those playful baths in the “Contramaestre”.
The agenda was completed with a visit to Pitillán’s pool, which the locals would later baptize with the name “Chorrerón”. The popular tales said that there were caimans in that pool. Fidel, Aida and René saw none. A rock walk allowed crossing from one side to the other without getting wet. Aquilino did not extend to them the permission to go to the most famous of the pools: “El Encanto”, also with a load of fictions, from fantastic sirens to shocking drownings.
In “La Poza del Diablo” they enjoyed long dives, strokes along the length and width of the pool, games, jokes, furtive glances, hearts agitated by the proximity of the bodies. Hours passed unnoticed.
At noon, return; abundant lunch. Fidel drinks again the water from the “Contramaestre”, which comes fresh through pipes from the very river to the house. A little rest and again to the “Contramaestre”. René said that Fidel did not want to leave the river and Aquilino had to get a bit tough.
On October 12, around five o’clock in the morning, 13-year-old Fidel Castro began his return trip to Santiago de Cuba. In his head, memories of the magnificent Contramaestre river, its fresh water, of Aida, of the town. He came back several times, but in other conditions, because his ideas fertilized by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and José Martí, placed him in the vanguard of a nation that brought freedom and independence to the Cuban people.
