“I here in Palma have never been attended by either the Government or the Party. Yes, I have read about situations such as the payment of the prosthesis, or that Law that comes out… But they tell me that I have no right, because I am neither a combatant, nor am I from illegality, nor did I fight for the Revolution.”
“Well, I am a victim of war. When I was nine years old, in October 1958, my mother brought me sick from the countryside here to Palma. The rebels put a bomb against the guards of the other Government - of the Batista Government, which was the one that ruled in that year 1958. I was nine years old. I was born in 1949. That was on October 17, 1958. I lost both my legs, two men got killed at that car, my mother lost one leg and the other one she has so damaged that it would be maybe better if she’d lost it too. Some private cars picked us up there and took us to Santiago. That was our process.”
Yaquelín González Jover was born in 1949 in the Cuban countryside. On October 17, 1958, a bomb left by the rebel army of Fidel Castro against the government guards of the dictator Fulgencio Batista (which the rebels were trying to overthrow) exploded, leaving her without both legs. Her mother also had one leg amputated - her other leg was seriously injured. Although the Revolution of Fidel Castro triumphed in 1959, she received no financial help. Her surgeries and prostheses had to be covered from family funds. After the sixth grade, she began working as a typist for a coffee company, where she worked for 25 years until she was retired due to illness. Today she resides in Dos Palmas with her 94-year-old mother, both living with disabilities caused by this event and without any governmental help until now.
