CAMAGÜEY. - To speak with Arys Jorge Cebrián Puig for almost one hour about Che, of his presence in Camagüey and on the different contacts that he had while the Heroic Guerrilla Fighter worked as the Minister of Industries, is like bringing to the present the figure of a man of universal size.
The testimonial route planned by the interviewee started by remembering the time that in the provincial delegation of the Department of Industries received a message, by telex, directed to his person and signed by Che, summoning him to a meeting in his offices in Havana.
After communicating it to the delegate in Camagüey, Arys understood that there was no confusion. Che wanted that the intermediate officials had a vision of the development and functioning of the councils of direction to this instance at national level. The representative from here who was attending to Mining traveled.
He made the trip warned that he could not arrive after 4:00 p.m. Che had the custom, as style of direction, to close the access to the place. At the fixed hour, this measurement was taken to brake indiscipline in the fulfillment of the schedules.
Whoever was, later he received them, with his correspondent call of alert.
When Cebrián arrived, there were the 52 directors of the different companies, as well as the vice-ministers of the Basic Industry, Orlando Borrego, and the one of the Light one, Commander Orlando Castiñeiras, and the directors of branch.
The interviewee narrated that the first experience was that Che delivered to the managers a form so that they were filling it, in whose spaces must gather the average salary, cost for peso, contribution to the budget and other economic indicators so that they demonstrated knowledge of their respective entities.
It turned out an interactive process and Cebrián remembered that Che reproached Jesus Suárez Gayol, director of that time of the Company of Flour, because he had to dominate the results, and in a particular way of the factory of cookies La Estrella.
- How did you meet Che?
- It is important to say it to relate it to the other visits. Antonio del Pino, who was the Industries delegate, said to me: "Cebrián, we have to go to the airport to receive Che”. We were up to the track in the previously known as Civic Wings, employed during the Second World War.
“He appeared in a green light aircraft. It landed more or less blending. It turned out that the pilot was Che. Hence, we were for the visit house of Garrido, where there were Benito Sánchez, secretary of the CTC, Tomasevich, Commander chief of the square, and Felipe Torres Trujillo, the first secretary of the Party.
“In the conversation, he explained the program of his visit to the water bomb factories, of turbines Brothers Steere, to a nearby workshop where they were making land plane for the preparation of ground, infinite tiles, the cookies producer The Pigeon of Castile and the industry of refractory bricks Azorin for the boiler of sugar mills, among others”.
Cebrián told that Che sat down to have lunch unwillingly because he thought the menu was an excess, while in the dessert he use the time to clarify some doubts:
“Do you allow me Commander? I attend the local industries and inside them the ice factory. The Fishing is requesting ice and is fundamentally for the population”.
“Don´t worry, Che answered. Do not sell ice to the Fishing. They are going to do his factories, through a contract done in Bulgaria, one for Camagüey of three 33 tons tanks and other one for Nuevitas, of 33 tons”.
Cebrián accomplished the mission assigned by Heroic Guerrrilla Fighter to visit in Sierra de Cubitas, in the properties of Paso de Lesca, a factory, very modest, that was devoted to the wooden distillation and to produce methylated spirit to low scale, with the target to generalize this experience in the Ciénaga de Zapata. A while after two engineers sent by him came, between them a Mexican, for the precision of all the details of this technology.
The interviewee remembers the time that was with Che in the opening of the Nuevitas´ factory of spikes wire and of electrodes. He brought to collation an anecdote related to the allocation of a multifamily building that was assigned to the workpeople of the industry, and the intransigent position that took up office when he knew that there was not born in mind the partner who generated the development of the production of methylated spirit.
Cebrián went out of the place and to the return it did it with a bottle that was containing this substance, and when he saw him entering Che said to him:
“Calm down, he went red”. Joking, he estimated: "Why didn´t you bring another soft drink?”. That way the tension diminished and Benito Sánchez received the orientation of checking the case. Finally, Damián Sánchez received the apartment.
Many anecdotes were left without telling, of how Cebrián, of traveling salesman of different products, before the triumph of the Revolution, would turn with the years into a thick worker of the sector of industries and would administer factories as that of infinite tiles
On June 14 the man who radiates example not only for the Cuban but for the rest of the humanity he would be 90 years old. I turn out to be forced to ask Cebrián: What is the image that stayed of him in your mind?
“Che went forward to his century. His ideals were so pure, he drank from the educations of Lenin, from the theory of Carlos Marx. In his life, he behaved as it must be a pure communist. This is the picture that I received from Che, he preached with his example and simplicity.
“He had two things, whoever fails to fulfil he had left two ways: to resign from the charge or to accept the sanction that was applied to him; later there was analyzed if he was going for another charge. If he was sick he ordered to take rest or he sent him to the sanatorium of Topes de Collantes. He joined the humanism to the honesty”.
In his home, located in the San Patricio street, in this city, he preserves proudly the appointment that Che gave him, through Resolution, signed on February 20, 1961, designating him as delegate of Local Industries in Camagüey.
- Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez