Sergio González “El Curita”, nothing could break his resolve

Many young people will know his name because of the park bearing his name at the corner of Galeano and Reina streets, where he printed *History Will Absolve Me* in his small printing press. But Sergio González López, “El Curita” (The Little Priest), was much more than that—a true nightmare for the Batista dictatorship, and nothing could break his resolve.Sixty-eight years after his assassination by the henchmen of the Batista dictatorship, the people of Cuba, as they do every year, pay a well-deserved tribute to his memory.The printing press in the old Plaza del Vapor became a hotbed of revolutionary activity in 1957. On November 30 of that year, the Military Intelligence Service (SIM) raided and shut down the premises. In a matter of seconds, thanks to his ever-present reflexes, Sergio managed to slip away among the establishments of other friends, escaping and going completely underground.Numerous accounts from his comrades have emerged about the leader of the action and sabotage group of the 26th of July Movement (M-26-7) in Havana, which organized the Night of the Hundred Bombs. In May 1957, he was arrested on the corner of Sol and Egido streets and savagely tortured, leaving him deaf in his right ear. Imprisoned in the Castillo del Príncipe, he organized a hunger strike to protest the Moncada prisoners on the Isle of Pines and made a spectacular escape from prison on October 22, 1957, along with ten comrades, during a family visit, by jumping over the wall reserved for lawyers.He led the M-26-7 armed groups in the capital after his daring escape, and just two weeks later, with a broken foot after jumping from a second-story window in a Vedado house while fleeing a police cordon, he ordered his doctor to put a heel on his cast and thus organized an operation that the population dubbed "The Night of the Hundred Bombs." More than 200 combatants participated in the operation, including those who obtained and transported the dynamite and detonators, as well as those who assembled and planted the bombs. Sergio oversaw every detail of the operation, walking with his leg in a cast, and insisted that not a single person could be injured in this massive attack, and so it was. The impact on the capital was momentous.Another of his notorious actions occurred when the tyrant Batista, after ordering the execution of the wounded assailants of the Presidential Palace, organized an event there where the so-called "leading figures" would gather to express their gratitude for his survival of the assassination plot orchestrated by José Antonio Echevarría and the Revolutionary Directorate.Knowing this, Sergio arranged for three couples, all registered under the supposed surname Castro at three hotels adjacent to the Palace, to rent rooms and set fire to the beds, where he had placed bullets. A three-way shootout thwarted the servile ceremony. Sergio also directed the notorious sabotage of the fuel tanks at the American refinery of Esso Standard Oil, associated with the British Shell, whose black smoke billowed for several days, signaling to Havana residents that the struggle was reignited.He organized the sabotage of the aqueduct's driver, the destruction of financial documents at the Clearing House, and the boycott of electric company units and other locations. Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, aware of the daily danger to his life in the capital, sent Moisés Sio Wong, who would later become a brigadier general after the revolutionary triumph, from the Sierra Maestra mountains to order him to leave the capital and join the Rebel Army to protect it in the face of the complex battles that would follow. On March 11, 1958, a few days before his assassination, Sergio met privately with Sio Wong in the park near the Monaco cinema and asked him to convey to Fidel that he respected his orders but that, even while aware of the danger that threatened him and the relentless persecution he was subjected to, he believed that his duty and his place to fight were in the city he knew. Sergio was excited by the surge in the struggle in Havana during the few months he had been leading the MR-26-7 Action Groups. He felt his presence was essential on the eve of the planned general strike, which he believed would be a fatal blow to the tyranny, and he didn't think he should abandon his comrades at that moment. He had everything prepared for a series of actions to begin on March 19, 1958, to create a climate of insurrection and then call for a general strike. A counter-order forced him to postpone the date. He spent the entire morning of the 18th informing the various groups at their homes, and a visit to the house on K Street wasn't on his schedule for that day. “Stop over there, I’m going to check on these people for a moment,” he told the driver as they passed apartment 7 at 420 K Street. He refused the driver’s offer of a ride, got out unarmed, and said he wouldn’t be long, unaware that the apartment had been occupied by police since the previous night. One of his assailants recounted that in the early morning of March 19, 1958, when they murdered El Curita—so named for his more than ten years in the seminary until he met the future mother of his children, realized he had no vocation for celibacy, and abandoned his priestly aspirations—they pulled him from the car in poor physical condition in the Altahabana neighborhood. Faced with his imminent death, he opened his bloodied shirt and challenged them: “Shoot, shoot, there’s a man here!”