“For me it would be a great satisfaction to visit my father on October 16th because it is a very special day, it is also my smaller brother’s birthday, Gabriel Eduardo, who lives in Panama. Let’s God willing become a reality my dreams, that is our hope.”  

Antonio Guerrero Cabrera, Tony’s son, is already a 22 years old young man and he exceed his father's size, he studies at the University of Computer Sciences in the fourth year of the career, he is already engaged with his fiancée, and he sometimes becomes “tiny” when he speaks about his father Antonio “Tony” Guerrero. 

“I would want to send him all my kindness affection, mainly now, when he is in jail fulfilling an unfair condemn. The best I can do, it is to send him as a gift my best studies´ results,  I mean it following his behaviour as a model in my daily chores and giving to him all my love as he deserves, as the best father he is for me”. 

“Pitifully I can not personally congratulate him, as I would want to do; they had never granted me a visa to be close to him; so, I just can do it by phone. I will make it today, because my father calls the day before, just in case, to avoid some kind of problem inside the prison. If we could, we will congratulate him again tomorrow. I always take advantage these days to transmit him the congratulations on behalf of my brother who does not see him already since many years ago, so I encourage him in that way. Through me he gets in touch with his two sons!”
 
Which one was the last birthday that you two pass together? 

"When I was very small, we share together some birthdays’ time before he left outside. They were very happy and pleasant moments for me.”
 
Do you have any communication with your brother? 

“Yes, through the telephone calls and e-mails. On vacations, my brother also visits Havana City with his family. So, we keep in touch!”
 
How much time did you live together with your father?
 
"Up to my six. The most of my lifetime I have been without my father’s company, but even far away he has found the way of being close,  in a straight  father-son connexion, so I have never felt his absence. I got him beside me in moments when I more needed his presence; were they, good or bad times. That’s something that I can not forget”

 

 

Do you remember the time when you lived together in Santiago? 

“I remember that I always saw him busy, laboriously, carrying out many things, caring a lot about his work and his family; I think he is a real revolutionary man. My mother has told me that he often returned from job very late, even at dawn, dusty, because at A. Maceo’s airport, where he was working, were under construction.” 

“I was small then and I can’t remember those moments exactly, even less, those at high night hours, when I was deeply asleep. There were nights when I woke up and I saw him. But, he was busy or in meetings the must of the time, he worked zealously, for that reason many people do not forget Antonio Guerrero, and they could not easily accept by that time that he could be a deserter, a traitor.” 

“Each man makes his on destiny; people could not predict what would happen, but they always had faith on him.” 

The best moments... 

“Those that we shared together when he came to visit us in 1997 year; I was elder,  so those memories are more consistent to me. It was my prom at primary school. We first went to Santiago and afterwards returned back to Havana. It was extraordinary for me to spend with him all that time after being so much time without seeing each other.”
 
“When I was small and we just could chat by phone, I usually told him: «The only thing that I would want is to hug and to kiss you», and invariably he replied: «Don't worry, that’s gonna be soon». When finally he arrived, he told me: «So, didn't you want to kiss me?  Now you really got me here, so come in, come and hug me and kiss me, knock me down and fight me, fall on me and blow me down, come in, let’s go to bed and crush me! ».
  
“During vacation, after prom, we went to The Great Stone site. It was very exciting for me: we walked up many kilometres on foot and we finished climbing over a pipe truck to get there, because we didn't have a map or something to guide us and we were exhausted. I just laugh, and finally when we reached up there I told him: «Now let’s sing, just say something, don't you see that we did it! »”
 
“Staying at Havana City was so special, because the whole family joined us, we travelled, and we went for a walk to different places. For me was as a dream becoming true, and both of us understood that after his leaving won’t be for sure a moment to him to get back. My father's return was always uncertain.”
 
“After his capture date, September 12th of 1998 year, our chats and meetings got away, are every time more distant.”
 
How do you define your father's character?
 
“My father has a heap of beautiful qualities, he can be a poet, a crazy one or a humorist; he also is very kind. When we used to go to the beach, he was all the time joking, laughing, enjoying life, thinking about parties, dancing; he loved dancing.”
 
Does he dance well?  

“Yes, even if he would want to teach dancing in the prison, I’m sure he could. There was a relative's 80th birthday time ago, I remember that he stood up as the dance master and choreographer, he was who leaded the casino round, the little train as we used to call it, he was the host at that party and the one that more enjoyed him self.”
 
“When I was small, whenever he had a free time, he went with me to the park; I was terribly nuisance, with a continuous bothering. He always could handle me, better than my own mom; he knew how to calm me down.”
 
Do you remember the last day you saw him? 

“We said him goodbye at the airport; there were tears. We asked him when he would get back, if he had in mind when to return. Then we made a list with all the things that we will make when returned, but he didn't. The list still exists; I have got it because still I’m sure of that one day we will make it.”
 
“I don't know if he will have the same strength as before he does to make all we planned, but something of that will be done. This list has already more than nine years, so you can imagine how long it has become!”
 
“Mainly he needs to go to the beach. Every time I visited him at the prison – in spite of the guard surveillance and trying to not violate the prisons’ restrictions, I am able to lift him the pant and I tell him: ' you are in flames, you are bad, you have to catch sol', but he knows that all that she/he comes from me it is to laugh and to pass it the best thing possible. When the first thing that we will make returns it is to leave for a river, a beach or to catch sun in the roof. It is very white.”
 
What do you speak about when you see him in prison?  

“We talk bout my school activities, about my docent problems, about my physical training; we make plans about visiting Santiago de Cuba together. We speak a lot about love relationships, about our friends, even I tell him some stories about friends that make him remember some moments, making him laugh.”
 
Does he advice you about how facing life? 
 
“Yes, sometimes he also advices me and we have serious moments. He always says to me how necessary is to know the way to choose, he always reminds me the proverb: «Tell me with whom you walk and I will tell you who you are». He means that lassies are not the same, so the serious one let men to have lasting relationships.”
 
“He has told me stories about when he was a lad of my age, about his love relationships, about when he was studying in Ukraine. He  has taken as an example to me his friend’s Manuel life,  who started just with a courtship and finished marrying and changing his fate; he married an Ukrainian woman and he stayed living there in that country.  Dad told me that he met my mom in that country too and that everything started being normal and both became a very serious relationship; «so, you see where it ended, I was going to Havana City and I got to Santiago and there you were born! »   
Which is your mom contribution on keeping alive your father's values?  

“I think it is big. In every of my mom's chat is present my dad. Even when he left the country, in spite of that she did not know his reasons, she never spoke to me anything bad about him; she always knew who was really Tony.”
 
“They were communicating through letters. And by the time when we were living together in the same house, my mom established schedules when he phoned and we should respect them. That’s why I have a relationship with my father, she was the one who made it possible, and who never allowed to grow any kind of frustration in this relationship. It was a chock to us to hear that news at the Cotorro´s Open Tribune. I never thought that this can be happening.”
 
Didn't you know the facts, the imprisonment, in 1998?
 
“No. I knew it a week before at the Opened Tribune, in the 2000, through my mother who knew about it since 1999, but she didn't tell me anything. As I was very young, she decided to keep the secret. During that time she stopped me from picking up the phone to avoid me knowing that he was imprisoned, but the last call was too sad for her: there was a bad habit at the whole neighbourhood with videogames and I took the advantage in that occasion to ask him for sending me a Play Station. Then, he told me, «O.K. let’s see what can I do».

“That’s painful, but it was in this way:  My eyes were shining, thinking ´I got already my facking videogame and I did it for sure to her: She cried the whole night and the following day she spited out to me what has happened.”
 
"She gave thanks for the work that my father was making in favour of the Cuban people. She said that the sky was lit to her when a Security officer came to talk with me about the topic. That man explained to me the job that my father was developing. I actually did not understand anything, because if all was in that way, why he was imprisoned?”
 
How was the first time that you saw him in jail? 
 
"It was really touching, after all those checkups, it was embarrassing… it was hard to me to see him dressing that blue clothes. A man like Tony being imprisoned! These are things of life that you cannot explain. He appeared thru that door and strengthened me, I was about to cry. But in that moment, he took my ear and told me: What’s up, champion!   (October of the 2007)