Francisco Riverón Hernández

Francisco Riverón Hernández (1917-1975)

He was born in the Villa of Güines on April 2, 1917. He was one of the best poets born in the homeland. The Cuban countryside and peasant traditions were his highest inspirations.

Even though he entered into practically all different poetic styles, he reached his highest literary prestige in the décima (poetic composition of ten verses of eight syllables each). In the literary prologue of the poetic anthology Desde donde vivo (From Where I Live), Cuban poet Luis Mario affirms: “To say Francisco Riverón Hernández is to evoke all the lovely enchantment that could fit into a ‘décima’. The poet’s name is indissolubly tied to this poetic expression, profusely cultivated in the interior of the Island, that he knew how to properly dress it and introduce it in the capital’s salons.”

His work transcended the borders of the homeland and his collaborations in Bohemia, Carteles (Posters), Prensa Libre (Free Press) and other publications were noteworthy and with a great social conscience.

His poetry also denounced the abuses and the resulting social setbacks that occurred with the ill-conceived Marxist-Leninist system. Riverón would say: “Here are the four letters of my Island having now surnames: Hungry Cuba, Sad Cuba and, above all, Slave Cuba.”

During the month of August 1971 the infamous repressive corps State Security forcefully and illegally entered his modest home, confiscating all his works. Several years later, on January 13, 1975, frustrated and dejected under the Communist yoke that sunk into pain the land that he so much loved, this eminent bard died, who, like nobody else, sang to the town where he was born: “You, Mayabeque lighthouse / as a wet streamer, / blue son of Catalina / given to my native soil. / Towards a salt embrace / you stretch your sweet vein, / and well beyond all sorrow / shouted by the rural road, / in the arms of a beach / you die of sea and of sand.”

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