The Galician Panchita, mother of Julio and Pedro Trigo López

2024-07-26 15:44:56

There was no bed of roses in Galicia or Havana for Francisca López Sánchez, Viariense Panchita, mother of the Moncadistas Julio and Pedro Trigo López. She lived poorly, between fear, shocks, and the hardest blow a mother could receive when they brought her the news of the murder of her eldest son, Julio, hours after the end of the attack on the Moncada barracks, on July 26 , 1953.

The dictator Fulgencio Batista ordered to kill the prisoners and the prisoners without trial and those who would be arrested after the transcendental action of the one hundred year youth, which happened on the morning of Santa Ana in Santiago de Cuba. So, on July 26, 27 and 28, after the torture, the lives of 70 young people were taken, including the son of the Galician Panchita. History does not know its equivalent of a massacre in the colonial era or in the Republic, that is. Fidel wrote in his Manifesto for the Nation, a document that was secretly circulated months after the end of the trial against the survivors.

Galís and their children took part in the attack on Dun Moncada, around 15 young people, such as the lawyer Fidel Castro Ruz and Abel Santamaría Cuadrado, the leaders of the first and second of the activity, respectively, and Haydee, Abel’s sister, also like the children Panchita, Julio and Pedro.

Through the intervention of the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, Monsignor Enrique Pérez Serantes, from Galicia, 32 prisoners managed to save their lives. The clergy began the search on the condition that the lives of those young people were guaranteed.

A photograph taken by the photographer from the Moncada barracks showed the terrible torture inflicted on Julio, when he was only 27 years old. An eye was missing on the left side of his face, and the skin and bone on that side were crushed by blowing. Julio Trigo López remains in Cuban history as one of the strongest and bravest participants in the Moncada.

One day before the attack, Julio suffered hemoptysis and Abel Santamaría ordered him to return to Havana, but he decided to take part in the action and joined the group at the Saturnino Lora hospital. He was wounded in the leg and nevertheless continued to fight, until he and Abel were captured. Hours later both were tortured and murdered.

Panchita had no idea where her boys were, but she believed they were enjoying a vacation in Varadero, which gave them a clue. That’s why on July 27, when Pedro came home, she immediately asked and Julito, where is he? And you are curious, what is going on? Peter says to him: Mom, I was in the attack on Moncada…Panchita interrupts him and asks about Iulto again. The realization that something terrible had happened to her eldest son overwhelmed her and she said she felt her heart skip a beat in her chest.

On Sunday, August 3, the newspaper El Mundo published the list of the dead from Moncada, headed by the name Julio Trigo López. His opponents brought the diary to Pedro: Hevia Blanco, president of the Orthodox Party in Santiago de las Vegas, and three people who were with him in the attack on Moncada: Pedro Gutiérrez, Oscar Quintela and Néstor González. Trigo lived with his wife in the neighborhood of El Globo, near Calabazar, and left immediately in Hevia’s car to break the news to his mother.

What is happening, where is Julito? Panchita asked desperately. Pedro took her to his house in El Globo, where a group of colleagues would give him the information. Once inside the car and in the middle of the road that connects the two towns of Havana, Pedro has no choice but to answer his mother’s constant question: Mom, Julito is presumed dead.

Panchita started crying and put her hands on her chest where her heart was struggling to break out due to strong tachycardia. And at Pedro’s house they gave her a cup of steamed lime which she drank slowly, immersed in God knows how many memories. He fell silent and after a while said to Pedro: Take care of yourself, I only have you left and she put a neat handkerchief on her face in an attempt to dry the number of tears. She wanted to return to Calabazar where the people on the streets were waiting to offer their condolences. The neighbors loved Julio very much, he was studying for a degree in pharmacy and he used to help anyone who was sick. That’s why Pedro said: That day I saw many sad people and crying with heartfelt condolences to my mother.

Panchita had a strong character, this armor was given to her by great enemies and emotions. Therefore, when they proposed to take the remains of Júlio to the Calabazar cemetery, he opposed it and said with extraordinary magnanimity that he should be buried in the necropolis of Santa Ifigenia in Santiago de Cuba where his brother martyrs Moncada remained. From then on, she was rarely seen smiling and was always surrounded by a halal of melancholy and a certain calmness that people confused with alienation. She placed a portrait of Julio on the dining room shelf and a vase that had no shortage of flowers on the anniversary of her boyfriend’s birth or death. It was not until the victory of the Revolution that she was able to visit her son’s grave and bring white roses.

All the past came to the mind of Panchita, who was born like her husband in 1895 and in the same village of Miñotos, Viveiro, Galicia. Since she opened her eyes to the world she was surrounded by poverty. She couldn’t go to school or dream about dolls. His only true love was Servando Trigo Rouco.

Servando first came to Havana in 1921 and got a job as a taxi driver. Two years later, Panchita came from an old ocean liner at the Luz dock and lived for a while in the house of Antonia, Servando’s sister, located on a lot that was at 29 and Zapata.

In 1924 Panchita and Servando married in a notary’s office in Old Havana. The couple lived for a short time in a house on Escobar Street and from there they moved to Infant No. 90, where Julio was born on May 27, 1925, and three years later, Pedro, on June 29, 1928. Panchita began to present health problems and the doctors suggested returning to Galicia. Together with her small children, one three years old and the other 8 months old, she went to Miñotos. He lived in a country house of unpolished stones and slabs that had only two rooms, the kitchen on the ground floor and the bedroom upstairs. Water and firewood for cooking were found in a spring and in a forest far from home, where the children gathered chestnuts, the staple food of the family, when they grew up.

When Panchita recovered, he found work as a day laborer planting potatoes; He saved a few pesetas and bought a cow which he named Marela because of her mustard color. During the afternoon she would shoulder a portable sewing machine and sew clothes for the family of Ricardo Pita, the owner of the farm where she worked as a day laborer every morning. To sew a pair of pants, dress or shirt they paid him a peseta.

Panchita was unable to buy good shoes from the boys and that’s why when she returned to Havana in 1936, they brought footwear from zocas and because of these wooden shoes Julio and Pedro suffered the ridicule of the boys from neighborhood of Havana. Both learned Galician and when they arrived in the Cuban capital it was easy for them to express themselves in their mother tongue. Two days after arriving in Cuba, Miñotos’ house collapsed.

After two moves, the Trigo López family took possession of the house in Calabazar marked with the number 13 Martí Street. The happiness did not last long, because the accident at work caused the death of Servando, who died on October 8, 1938, at the age of 42. Panchita found a job as an ironer at the La Minerva dry cleaners, under the requirement to renounce Spanish citizenship and take Cuban citizenship. He walks six kilometers every day to save ten cents on round trip transport.

When the Revolution was victorious, Fidel visited her and she appreciated that gesture. That evening he remembered the times he had seen Fidel and Abel come home, very tired, and how he had managed to feed them together with their children, not doubting that the four of them were about to die make a massive attack on the barracks.

Francisca López Sánchez, the Panchita de Calabazar Galísis, died at the age of 93, on December 5, 1998, in the house run by nuns from Santa Susana, in the municipality of Bejucal.

(Part of the evidence for the book Cuban Galiciansdone by Ángela Oramas Camero with the help of Pedro Trigo López).