Raul Ballate Perez at the May 1st workers day march in Cueto, Cuba. I had seen him around town but never really met him. But he was at the front of the parade with the other military folks when I spotted that old tattered homemade red and black armband that read "M-26-7". That is the 26th of July Movement, the official name for the Revolucíon that ousted Batista in 1959. Since the rebel forces had no uniforms, that armband was their identification. Some also wore handmade red and black bandanas as he had on. I asked him to come by the house sometime. He arrived the next morning.
Raul is 88, still smokes unfiltered cigarettes, and I found never turns down a beer or glass of rum in the morning. At noon after the parade he did eventually said he needed to go home and rest. He had already marched one and a half hours in the local parade.
He joined up with Raul Castro after the Batista police burned down his family home and fought with the "second front" for the entire Revolucíon. His weapon was a Thompson submachine gun which originally belonged to his best friend who was killed standing next to him.