Living outside Cuba for 31 years has not changed one iota the love and commitment that Julio Fonseca feels for his land, as he has demonstrated with his solidarity help, at the head of the Association of Cuban Residents in Toronto, Canada, Juan Gualberto Gómez.
He arrived in Canada in 1994, accompanying a young woman from that northern country, who worked as a language specialist and with whom he fell in love. Once in Toronto, capital of the province of Ontario, he worked as a professor of English at York University, the third largest in that nation.
As Cuba always remained in his thoughts and hearts, when Cubans organized in various groups in which they commemorated anniversaries and participated in other activities decided to join forces in favor of their country, in 2007 the Association of Cuban Residents in Toronto was created, of which he is its coordinator.
In this way, when the world was struggling to confront the dengue pandemic, the associates sent the first container with medicines and other resources, destined for health care centers.
From then on, that initiative – which inspired solidarity groups from other countries multiplied, until it reached 12 containers and the possibility of increasing that figure, with the effort of this Association, together with a storage project and another union in charge of raising funds to pay for transportation.
Julio Fonseca, who is also vice president of the National Network of Solidarity with Cuba, which brings together 25 Canadian organizations was born in Campechuela, a municipality in the eastern province of Granma, where as a young man he joined the Manuel Ascunce Domenech Pedagogical Contingent, graduating in 1978, when he began his professional career in a Basic Secondary School in the countryside.
He won the bachelor’s degree in English language, which he practiced until he began working in a training section of the Ministry of Tourism; then he fulfilled a cooperation mission, as an interpreter, in Ethiopia and then moved to the country where he shares so many gestures of altruism with his compatriots.
In a brief conversation held recently at the headquarters of the Icap delegation in Holguin, Fonseca acknowledged that, although he frequently travels to Cuba, especially to Granma, it is the first time he has done so to this province, to which he will return on other occasions, to deliver donations to different institutions.
Despite the tight blockade and the vicissitudes it causes, Fonseca reaffirmed that the Cuban people are not alone, because there are many people in the world who want to cooperate, as is the case in Canada, and the symbolism of these donations inspires others to join in such humanitarian gestures of love.
Also he specified that, in Toronto, the Association he directs and members of other projects, in addition to material support, disseminate the Cuban reality, its history and culture, in the interest of preserving, in other lands, the national identity.
In this way, Cuban-Canadian Julio Fonseca is an example of loyalty and altruism.
By:Arnaldo Vargas Castro/ Translated by Radio Angulo
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