[News] Alicia Jrapko - Presente!

Wed Jan 12 13:30:30 EST 2022

ALICIA JRAPKO, PRESENTE!
NATIONAL NETWORK ON CUBA NEWS AND UPDATES

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  **

  Alicia Jrapko, PRESENTE!

(1953 -2022)

*Dear colleagues and friends,*
With deep sorrow and on behalf of her family, we announce that our dear 
colleague, sister and friend Alicia Jrapko, left this January 11 at 
night, after fighting a cruel disease for more than two years. Despite 
the harsh treatment she never stopped working as much as she could. If 
Alicia regretted something, it was not being able to continue 
contributing, loving and living with the energy that always 
characterized her.

Alicia was a great Argentine revolutionary, the daughter of workers who 
from a very young age took on the struggles of a generation that dreamed 
of building an Argentina with social justice for the people. Alicia said 
in an interview… /in Latin America a great admiration was forged for 
Cuba, for Fidel, Raúl, Che and so many other revolutionaries. In 
Argentina we wanted the same, but it was not achieved and a large part 
of my generation lost their best children. /

//

Alicia was born on January 1, 1953 in Merlo, Buenos Aires province, grew 
up and was educated in Córdoba, where she studied journalism. 
Argentina's military dictatorship imposed in 1976 unleashed a fierce 
repression against all popular militants. Thirty thousand were 
detained-disappeared, including many of Alicia's classmates. She could 
not finish her degree, and with the clothes she was wearing, in the same 
year '76, she had to go into exile.

Each of Alicia's three children bears the middle name of her missing 
comrades: Gabriela Emma, Eileen Mabel, and Juan Alberto.

For several years she lived in exile in Mexico, then she settled in the 
United States, the most difficult and at the same time the most 
necessary country to support the causes of Latin America and fight 
against imperialism... /it was difficult to understand the aggression, 
the lies and the attacks against Cuba by the media and the government./

//

//

//

Alicia was committed to the struggles of American workers. In the early 
1990s through Cuba solidarity work with *IFCO-*Pastors for Peace, where 
she worked closely with Reverend Lucius Walker as his West Coast 
coordinator, Alicia helped organize and promote scholarships so that 
African-American and Latino students could attend the Escuela 
Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM) free of charge to become doctors in 
their communities. Her solidarity work brought her closer to Cuba every 
day; She became a spokesperson for many Pastors' caravans that traveled 
thousands of miles across the United States to counter the U.S. 
government's lies against the island, while collecting humanitarian aid 
as a symbol of solidarity with the Cuban people. «/We knew that the 
humanitarian aid that we brought to Cuba was symbolic, but we wanted to 
show that the U.S. government could not block solidarity between 
peoples. And we wanted to show that Cuba was not alone. The experience 
of traveling to Cuba in the Pastors for Peace caravans changed my life 
forever and brought me closer to Cuba and its people/,” she said in an 
interview.

In the year 2000 Alicia was at the forefront of the battle for the 
return of Elián González together with his father in Cuba, but her 
fundamental work is in the fight for the liberation of the Five Cuban 
Patriots, unjustly imprisoned for monitoring the activity of terrorists. 
in the United States against Cuba.

With determination and unparalleled courage, Alicia assumed the 
leadership of the International Committee for the Freedom of the Five in 
the United States, and managed to get trade unionists, religious 
leaders, congressmen, jurists, intellectuals, actors and artists to join 
the campaign for the release of the anti-terrorist Cubans *Gerardo 
Hernández Nordelo, Ramón Labañino Salazar, Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez, 
Fernando González Llort*and *René González Sehwerert.*

 From 2002 until his freedom in 2014, regardless of the risks and the 
enormous distances, together with her partner in struggle and dreams, 
Bill Hackwell, she visited Gerardo Hernández more than a hundred times 
in two maximum security federal prisons, and was the constant and 
affectionate support of family visits.

Alicia's enormous work and political commitment transcended before the 
Cuban people who conferred several distinctions on her, among them the 
Félix Elmuza Medal granted by the Union of Journalists of Cuba, the Coat 
of Arms of the city of Holguín and the Friendship Medal granted by the 
Council of State of the Republic of Cuba through the Cuban Institute of 
Friendship with the Peoples – ICAP --, for their immense work during the 
long years of struggle for the freedom of the Five.

Alicia strongly supported the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, the 
legacy of Hugo Chávez and President Nicolás Maduro.

The pages would not be enough to describe the enormous work that this 
brave woman carried out with extraordinary modesty, simplicity, dignity 
and fidelity, with all her energies put *at*the service of human 
improvement throughout her precious life.

Since 2011 Alicia has been the co-chair of the National Network on Cuba 
(NNOC). She was coordinator of the International Committee for Peace, 
Justice and Dignity of the Peoples in the United States and founder and 
co-editor of ResumenLatinoamericano in English. She created the U.S. 
chapter of the Network in Defense of Humanity and was a member of its 
General Secretariat. In her last project, despite being ill, Alicia was 
co-chair of the Nobel Committee of the Henry Reeve Cuban Medical 
Brigade, as one more effort in her tireless fight against the criminal 
blockade of Cuba.

Her name, Alicia, means truth. That truth was carried as a flag by our 
dear Ali throughout her life, the truth of the people against injustice, 
the truth, honesty, dignity and modesty of true revolutionaries, capable 
of giving everything, without any other ambition or personal motive. 
Alicia's leadership style attracted people to her and the fights she 
led, always with her big smile and sincerity, earning everyone's respect.

She honored us with her friendship and affection, with her enormous 
courage. And she leaves us all in this infinite sadness, but with her 
example of life, struggle, nobility, dignity and hope.

All our love goes to Gabriela, Eileen and Juanito, her beloved children, 
to her beloved life partner Bill Hackwell, her six grandchildren, the 
youngest Che Simón, born this January 5, whom she was unable to see or 
hold in her arms, but from whom she heard an audio of his cry for the 
future with a big smile; to her dear brother in Argentina, family, 
friends and colleagues in the United States.
We will never forget you soulmate, sister more sister and dearest.
*Goodbye Ali Dear! You will always be present! Ever onward to victory!*
/Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, Graciela Ramirez Cruz./
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*Our mailing address is:*
National Network on Cuba
PO Box 22455
Oakland, California 94609

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