They lost houses, lost lives and were forced to start again
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Rolando Saumell was born on June 22, 1963 in Havana. The father worked as a doctor, the mother took care of the household. Rolando spent the first seventeen years of his life in Cuba, after which he decided to go to work in the then friendly Czechoslovakia. Initially, he worked in a working-class position at the Svit factory in Zlín, the nationalized Baťa plant. After learning the Czech language, he started working as an interpreter for the Cuban embassy. He lived in Czechoslovakia with his Cuban wife Sara, and in 1988 their son Lumír was born. After the Velvet Revolution, Cuba tended - under Fidel Castro - to withdraw Cuban workers from Czechoslovakia back to their original homeland. Rolando and his family wanted to avoid this, so they emigrated illegally to Austria and after a few more months to the USA. In 2020, Rolando Saumell lived in Florida.
