Cuba had a man who became a legend for several reasons, among which was his wearing a blazer on his shoulders, even at the hottest of times. That man was Alfredo Guevara. He died yesterday at 87. His heart refused to go any further: he probably had worn it out for using it so much.
Alfredo was a unique character, certainly surreal: can you imagine him going from being production assistant to Luis Buñuel to be tortured and then a hero of the Revolution? Perhaps in those years of loyalties forged at the edge of death, is the germ of his legend as untouchable, of a fragile-looking tough guy.
I remember seeing him twice, the last just five months ago, inaugurating the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, the delirious night that Fito Paez dressed in red to sing with Van Van.
That night I saw him from afar, but the first time I even spoke to him, after surviving a human avalanche at the Acapulco, to see the La Niña de tus Ojos. It looked like a San Fermin on Avenida 26. It was night, and nobody wanted to surrender. When themob stampede the doors, I rushed to the side, while a venerable professor rolled on the floor, in a grotesque picture of how barbaric we can become, paradoxically, out of culture cravings.
It was not worth risking my glasses for a movie that anyway, I could see the following day without that ruckus, so I walked away from that hell. It was getting dark, and the height of the Chinese cemetery I found the closest thing to “ghost” to I have seen near any cemetery: “it” was Alfredo Guevara.
One is never really prepared to meet a personality, let alone meeting him in solitary corner of Havana after dusk. But there Alfredo was, arms crossed, looking at the commotion from the distance, lost in thought, until an insolent stranger (me) interrupted his thoughts:
“Damn, Alfredo, this is not easy!”, I snapped.
“What happened?” He replied, surprised but smiling…
“They seem to be animals, man, look what a mess to see a movie.”
“Imagine …” he said, shrugging his shoulders, to continue on his own while I’m away next to a partner who asked me where I knew Alfredo Guevara from. “From television. And back there,” I confessed.
Years passed, and like every Cuban who thinks himself as fairly intellectual, I always closely followed each criterion Guevara emitted. For many, his was holy word. An old friend from my boarding schools days scholarship, Leandro Estupiñán, author of perhaps the most inquisitive and thorough interview Alfredo ever received, confirmed it to me.
The Leo published his work under the title “The worst enemy of the Revolution is ignorance”, and proved to be a strong testimony of the Cuban process both for the fearless questions of the interviewer as the interviewee’s brave responses.
Alfredo was not without controversy, nor shunned it. In that dialogue he warned he was in favor of the youth, but talented youth. He had it clear that the youth does not have to do precisely with age.
Alfredo Guevara is gone, and he took many secrets with him, including why his inseparable dark jacket over his shoulders. When Amaury Perez asked the revolutionary vanguard, laughing he replied:
Anyone knows!
Alfredo, very good person and good friend, I worked in the ICAIC for long time.
Adios Alfredo.