“You can imagine… youth with the desire to party… but not everyone goes to places with the same intention. There are people who go with the intention of partying, of feeling good, and there are others who go with the intention of doing something that has nothing to do with what the others have planned at that moment. In moments it became that... there were the gladiators who went out to the street. Every two seconds a blood encounter. There were a lot of deaths there in that square… I don't know… how could so many things happen there. When there is an event in any other part of Guantánamo, there are always the people who have to do with it… in this case the police. I don't understand why when they did the activities there, I never saw a policeman.”
“Rap is a way for African-Americans to express the things they felt, to have the freedom to express everything that was happening to them back then. And it became a trend, it had many followers, people who needed to express what they felt and took that music as a way of representing themselves and other people who might be experiencing the same thing as them and identified with the music they made. Currently, this gender is discriminated, because... people should have that freedom of expression, to express what they feel. And the moment arrives when the cultural background is mixed with other things, where they prohibit the person from expressing what she truly feels and when she says it then he is frowned upon.”
“Imagine that they are there and they do not directly have a person who instills in them what is good or bad at all times. And the girls… for needs and things… they did things that led them to have a bad time. For eating a plate of food, for running away to a party... they came drunk, you can imagine a girl of that age drinking... what could happen if people with a different mentality arrived, older than her, in a car... they took advantage of many of them and there were many of them who were diverted to another path that is not usual…”
“I tell you that there were many athletes who had talent and when we got there, that impact of what the school was like… they didn't stay in school. They left school because they couldn't stand, as one vulgarly says, the train that was lived there. That was the last. Imagine that at that time it was when they began to make the contingents here in that area of Guantánamo. And there was nothing planted there, it was to remove and disrupt all that marabusal. There were two contingents, one near the EIDE and another outside on the road there. We spend a criminal job there with food. The training sessions were very hard. That was the last thing, there were times when we were training and we hadn't had breakfast yet."
Giolvis Leliebre Duvergel was born in 1982 in Guantánamo, capital of the province that bears the same name and is located in the far east of Cuba, about 15 kilometers from the famous US military base. At the age of ten he began studying at the boarding Sports Initiation School in Guantánamo. The life marked by the separation of the parents from a very early age in the middle of the Special Period was not easy at all. Despite the scarcity of food at the school, enormous effort and excellent results were required. Because of this, many talented children left and others suffered injuries. This was the case of Giolvis who had a problem with his kneecap and had to go to study at the Padro Pablo High School, a school that became famous for its level of violence. He later returned to the sports environment and served as a trainer for Greek wrestling. When he finished his education, he went to Havana, where he worked in a tobacco trade. Later he returned to Guantánamo and had to undergo compulsory military service. He also worked in an assembly squad with his father and today works in a salt mine in Guantánamo. Giolvis resides in the southern part of the city, which is considered one of the most dangerous places on the island. He also belongs among the local exponents of urban music that serves as a safe conduct for him from the difficult situation in Cuba. According to him, the monetary reform carried out at the beginning of 2021 further aggravated the poor situation of the economy in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
