Fabio di Celmo: the last effluvium.

On September 4th, 1997, the largest of the Antilles experienced one of the most heartbreaking events in its history, when the prevailing stillness of the busy Copacabana Hotel in the capital city succumbed that fateful afternoon to the voracious maw of imperialism.

On September 4th, 1997, the largest of the Antilles experienced one of the most heartbreaking events in its history, when the prevailing stillness of the busy Copacabana Hotel in the capital city succumbed that fateful afternoon to the voracious maw of imperialism.

While the young Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo arranged a meeting in the hotel lobby with two of his childhood friends who had recently married and were celebrating their honeymoon on the island, coldness was corrupting the soul of the Salvadoran mercenary Ernesto Cruz Leon, who, influenced by the Cuban-American terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, was indifferently awaiting the exact moment to detonate a powerful bomb.

The dreams of that thirty-something soccer and reading enthusiast, who had been enraptured by the warmth and beauty of Cuba for the previous five years, were shattered when the lobby of the facility was crowded with diners and the deafening roar perpetrated by Cruz León was not long in coming. The heart of Giustino di Celmo, the sonorous witness of the roar and progenitor of the one who ended up being its fatal victim, was then overshadowed.

The tragic event, replicated in the Triton and Chateau Miramar hotels, as well as in the Bodeguita del Medio restaurant, was part of the list of attacks orchestrated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and other detractors of the revolutionary government in their eagerness to undermine the Antillean economy by undermining the flourishing tourism sector.

The commotion lacerates the country and the world and, even more, the indignation, because just as the victimizer and his mentor took responsibility for the macabre event without a visible trail of regret, Giustino passed away in 2015 without seeing a relevant judicial sentence for those criminals who unjustly stole the life of the third of his offspring.

Twenty-seven years have passed since the bloody outbreak and the imperialist hegemony, lackadaisical, increases its ferocity, but the figure of Fabio di Celmo does not cease to shine and, as an anti-terrorist trench and symbol of peace and justice, ennobles the Genoese land where he was born in 1965 and to which he gave his boundless affection and the last of his effluvia.

Written by Yadiel Barbón Salgado.