Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Camagüey, Jun 2nd. - Raquel was born on June 2nd, 1923 in Havana. Perhaps she is the oldest clandestine fighter in Cuba.
For the purpose of the Revolution, she lives in the capital, accompanied by Raúl Enrique, his 73-year-old son, proud of the story of the mother and father: Raúl García Peláez, founder of the July 26 Movement in Camagüey.
At the age of three, along with the family, the batey of the former central Senate, in Minas, welcomed her. The father: Mario Riveron Ruiz, served, until his retirement in the early 1960s, as head of traffic in the sugar industry.
Jesus Henry says: "Mom spent all childhood, adolescence and part of the youth there, until she was saddened with Dad in which she went on to live on Padre Valencia Street in the city of Camaguey.
The coup d’ état of Fulgencio Batista, of 10 March 1952, marked a turn in Raquel's life, accompanied the husband in all activities against the regime.
Antonio Massía (Tony), who emerged as a restless student in favor of the righteous causes, was barely fourteen or fifteen years old, when he met García Peláez, contact that opened the way for him to later enlist in the struggle for the Revolution.
At 88 he has an enviable memory: When the minions raided the fifth property of Raúl's family, located on the Vertientes road, Rachel hid compromising weapons and only found hunting shotguns. They couldn't prove anything. In that fifth, the 26/7 Movement was founded, and she was actively participating in the organization of the clandestine meeting.
Weeks before the uprising of November 30, 1956 in Santiago de Cuba, Frank País, on the return from Mexico, where she met Fidel for the second time in October, she was in García Peláez's house with concrete instructions from the course of the Revolution. She would finally head the expeditionaries of the Granma yacht on November 2 for Las Coloradas. She participated in the meeting.
On the first occasion in August 1955 he returned as head of National Action of the Revolutionary Movement 26 of July; in the second in October he went to raise with Fidel his conviction that they were not in a position to start the struggle for the lack of weapons and preparation.
She spoke candidly and the leader of the Revolution explained to him that they could no longer back down. His promise: In 56 we will be free or martyred - it constituted an act of life or death, the word be pawned would be fulfilled.
The show of the integrity and extraordinary organizational capacity of the young Santiaguero was provided with the November 30th Uprising, which had a national character. Its actions spread throughout the East and Camagüey, and also, with less strength, in Santa Clara and some points of the West, collect historical reviews.
Harassment of the repressive forces in Camagüey forced Raquel and García Peláez to march into exile in Mexico with the three children, two of them already deceased.
The house where they resided in the Aztec nation, used it as a camp for revolutionaries and used cots. They always had a risk that the police could detect them.
Massa described Raquel as an exceptional, selfless woman, changed her life, highly accommodating by the origins of García Peláez's middle class to become a full revolutionary.
The husband was Cuba's ambassador to the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a member of the secretariat of the Party Central Committee and the first secretary of the political organization in Matanzas. She always showed modesty and knew how to drive, with respect, the formation of her children.
Raquel, who will receive on June 2 the affection of her people, holds the Fighter of the Clandestine Fighter Medal, that of Combatant for 30, 40, 50 and 60 years of the FAR, the distinction 28 of September of the CDRs and the 23rd of August of the FMC.
Asked by telephone how she feels to know that tomorrow she is birthday, she responded peacefully in her home, located in 21 and 28 in the Havana Vedado: Happy to have arrived at this age and having the recognition of the people, but there was no happiness. Being in a corner, it's better to die. (Enrique Atiénzar Rivero/Collaborator Radio Cadena Agramonte) (Photo: Courtesy of the Family)
