Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Enrique Atiénzar Rivero/ Collaborator.
Elda had to work the shift from 3:00 to 11:00 at night in the old emergency service, the building where the provincial Hygiene and Epidemiology laboratory is currently located, when she received a top secret message: change it to another schedule because we need you to heal a revolutionary wounded in the leg and hands.
She has never forgotten that first aid was provided in that person's house and then she was taken to the clinic, where the Doctor Octavio de la Concepción y de la Pedraja military hospital is located today, in the Garrido neighborhood.
This was one of the first of several facets as a combatant of the clandestine struggle here in Camagüey, a city where she arrived at the age of 27, from Bayamo, her homeland, and put down roots here until today, at the age of 97, last year. October 10th.
The sale of July 26 Movement bonds to raise funds for the cause also stands out among the strictly confidential facts known to her.
Meanwhile, she assured that she never felt persecuted by the attention she assumed in clandestine work, "although colleagues with whom I interacted told me: you have to do things very carefully."
In the first apartment in the quarters on Santa Rita Street #9, Elda settled many years ago. The Nursing specialty studies at the Calixto García hospital in Havana appear in his mind, where he finished his degree, after the entrance tests carried out in Camagüey.
Over the years, Elda Dionisia Tamayo-Saco Varona, after spending some time at Garrido's clinic, she explained, helped a lot in the opening of the Manuel Ascunce Domenech hospital, along with fellow Guantanamera student Isabel Leyen, who also studied in Havana.
She worked for many years in the neurosurgery ward at Manuel Ascunce and then moved to the Ophthalmology service, where she remained for 26 years until she retired, due to having her mother, an elderly woman, under her care.
She admits that her memory is starting to fail her. “I remember some things, others I don't; "But I feel proud to have contributed my grain of sand to the triumph of the Revolution."
Among her plans—almost immediate—is the possibility of moving permanently to Bayamo with Clemencia, the only remaining sister, accompanied by family. (Photo: Humberto Cid González/ Radio Cadena Agramonte)
