02-16-06,9:51am

t had been a very cold winter in Chicago, but it was the mistreatment and intense work days that were most exhausting. There were many Puerto Rican females working in the postcard factory; if they became pregnant they had to work right up till the ninth month of pregnancy. One of the pregnant workers had a husband who suffered from tuberculosis; since she was the only breadwinner and earning a minimum wage, a collection was made to buy her baby clothes and accessories.

A rumor was started that it had been Irma Sehwerert who had organized the collection and some union representatives came to talk with her. They “did not help with anything at the time” and asked her to fill in some union affiliation papers.

“I didn’t have any experience, ideology or knowledge, of any sort, of politics, I promised to fill out the forms and they fired me. Or better said, I left, trying to cool things down [at the factory]. They [the workers at the factory] really needed their jobs, they were working in order to eat, and I had the support of my mother. That was my greatest experience, I was 17 years old.”

Her family’s uprooting, the contradictions she experienced in the United States, the difficult work conditions and a rift in the relationship with her mother and sister, due to her return to Cuba, all turned the shy Cuban-born girl into a woman.

“When I found myself alone in Cuba, I was forced to grow up.”

Back in Cuba, the Revolution had triumphed and Irma forever left behind the daily trips by train between Indiana and Chicago; all the horrible days spent toiling in the tomato sauce, toothpaste tube and pill container factories; and the trying times when her husband Candido and the workers at the big steel factory where he worked went on strike.

Both Irma and her husband had been active participants in the struggle to liberate their country. They joined the July 26 Movement (led by Fidel Castro), they sold revolutionary vouchers (a way to fund raise for the revolution), and collected money to send to the Sierra Maestra mountain range, where the rebels had established their base to fight the armed struggle against the Batista dictatorship. With the 1959 triumph of the Revolution, they came to Cuba with the idea of staying forever.

They met with the then Minister of Labor who informed them that they could better help the Revolution by staying in the US. He told them that an exodus to the US would soon follow along with a propaganda campaign against Cuba.

After the Bay of Pigs victory, life in the US was becoming unbearable. They were participating in all the rallies in Washington and New York and giving talks explaining the Cuban reality. Then they started to receive threats from rightwing organization formed by those who had fled from Cuba. “We were practically thrown out of the US.”

“I cried during the whole trip back to Cuba, I had left my mother practically destroyed, but for me at, at that moment in time, humankind was more important. I told myself that my mother would understand me someday.”



THE TRADE UNION RUNS IN HER BLOOD



Her early experiences in politics and her strong life-long commitment to fight against injustices helped Irma when she first returned to Cuba. Her first task was to teach her neighbors how to read and write. Later she would become leader of the union of workers at the Oceans and Fisheries Research Institute.

“We established a trade union and activists section. We experienced ideological struggles, there was confusion and some people were opposed to the creation of these organizations. There were workers who did not support the Revolution, scientists educated in capitalist ideology. Some joined the revolutionary process, others left the country. This was around the month of October, 1962, when I was the head of the library.”

Irma’s life was getting difficult. The Institute was far from her home and she had no relatives to look after her children Rene and Roberto, both of whom were born in the US. She moved to the Technical Information Center at the Ministry of Basic Industry, where she was elected second member of the union board.

Fifteen years of experience here have made her an excellent worker and union leader.

Irma recalls “one of the greatest moments of my life. I was one of eight women chosen to try the first sugarcane cutting machines in Cuba.”

“They were part of the hope to humanize work, and when Minister Joel Domenech told me that I had been chosen …just imagine!”

During the 1969 and 1970 sugarcane harvests, Irma Sehwerert worked detailing the equipment errors helping engineers to make the necessary adaptations, what Irma lacked in relatives, she made up for in friends. “My friends help me look after my children […]I left for Camaguey, and then to Matanzas.”

When her son Rene came down with hepatitis, Irma brought him along to the sugarcane harvest.

In 1973, at the request of the Trade Union Organization, she became part of the team of specialists that formed the Chemistry, Energy and Mining Union, where she remained until her retirement 20 years later. “I am not worried about age. I love the union; there is nothing nicer than working with the working class.”

Irma’s support of the revolution has seen her take on a lot of different work. For example, she once spent time aboard fishing boats, teaching fishermen how to read and write; and was a trade union teacher. “I have the satisfaction of having done everything in my capacity for the Revolution.”

She even had the opportunity of meeting Che Guevarra when her husband Candido took her, young Rene and Roberto to the plastics factory where he was the union leader.

“Che is very special to us. He shook little Rene’s hand. My two sons were hanging from his clothes, he held Roberto who was the youngest, he would have been around four years old; it was great!”



“MY MOTHER WANTED ME TO MARRY AN AMERICAN”



Being very young, Irma’s mother settled in the US with hopes of being able to later send for her two girls whom she had left in Cuba under her grandmother’s care. At the age of 14, Irma joined her mother.

“She wanted me to marry an American, to keep me by her side, but I refused, I couldn’t stand living there. It was a very unfair society.

One day I met Candido who told me he was a very good Cuban and invited me for dinner. Because he had been struggling economically in Cuba, he had come to the US to play baseball and then illegally remained.

Eventually, he was deported, but my mother made some arrangements and he was able to return, we were already engaged and we married when I was 18.”

Irma’s recalls those early years. When she became active in her support of the revolution, relations with her family became stressed, but now that has changed.

She was forced to return to the US, after her son Rene was arrested, to attend a trial against the Cuban Five in Miami along with Rene’s daughter Ivette. She reestablished ties with her family who also visit Irma in her beloved neighborhood of Cotorro (Havana). On one of these visits, her sister confessed to her, “I now realize why you are in this country.”



VALUES PASSED ON TO HER CHILDREN



“I have one regret. I feel that I was too strict with my sons’ education. Rene and Roberto’s playtimes were during military school, voluntary work, or during the sugarcane harvest. If something helps me feel better, it is that I always had time for the boys’ spiritual needs, we always talked about problems and I would give them advice. These things always kept us very close.”

Her home was the center of the family and, in spite of being divorced, her relation with the boy’s father was friendly and full of love.

After retiring, Irma has found satisfaction in community work. She is a member of the Cuban National Assembly and through her work with the Crime Prevention Commission, regularly visits prisons in Cuba. “Once I talked to a family who were celebrating the birthday of a relative who was in jail. I told them I could only give a kiss to my son upon arriving and leaving from the prison, and that I would sneak a few caresses of his hand […] I never say I am Rene’s mother, but they find out most of the time. This task [with the commission] has spiritually enriched me…I am happy doing this job.”