With a photographic memory, Juan Emilio evokes, with a semicolon, the time he arrived at the Arena bar proclaiming his tamales, when a "casquito" (policeman), with tremendous drunkenness, hit him in the face and pushed him. He ended up on the floor on one side, and the bucket with the tamales on the other.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- “Then a military man, one of those who here in the city of Las Tunas was called 'old guard' helped me get up, picked up the tamales and put them in the bucket. And it seems that out of pity he gave me 1.00 peso. It was 1958," says Juan Emilio.

“I took my bucket, I stopped in the Gascón garage (today SASA), near there, still with my face on fire from the hit and I shouted 'son of a bitch' at him, and with it, I ran all over Ángel Guardia street and I didn't stop until I got to the Railroad."

Juan Emilio Batista Cruz, a boy who was 14 years old at the time, used to sell everything, because the only way to help his father to support a family of six children was to work on whatever thing.

Thus, one day, when he was proclaiming all over the railway platform: “Buy here a roast pork sandwich for only 0.10 cents," some boys from his neighborhood, Casa Piedra, behind them shouted, jokingly, but gave him away: throat, nose and ear. And that day the sale of snacks finished.

So he put together a box of shoeshine and began to venture into his new "business" through various streets of the city and in public places, except in the Arena bar (he says it and laughs).

And with the effort of his mother, who was dedicated to washing clothes to also seek income, he studied typing. On a certain occasion, when he was polishing some shoes, his client told one who had just arrived: "You see him that way, but he's a typist."

The newcomer did not believe that a boy with the marks of ink and bitumen could have that ability, because at that time it was an important knowledge and not everyone could have that title.

Then they made a bet and Juan Emilio demonstrated his skills on a Remington typewriter that was in the Pasaje Hotel, now the Ferroviario Hotel.

"The man whose shoes I was cleaning won the 0.25 cents bet, but he only gave me the 0.05 cents that I charged for cleaning."

There are many anecdotes that Juan Emilio has to tell. For example, from when he would weed yards for only 0.20 cents, and collected sand to sell a cubic meter also at the same price. And when he couldn't get past the fifth grade, because since he had to "look for a job" to be able to live, he left the classrooms.

To his memories come children without desks and barefoot, beggars everywhere, houses made of board and palm leaves, of yagua (royal palm fiber) and those built by the system known as the muddy, a method that consisted of building a kind of hut with sticks and the grass hair of a donkey, to later line the walls with mud.

There he stops and remembers his aunt Amada: "People called his home the glasshouse because it had so many cracks that almost everything could be seen from the outside."

But with the arrival of the 60s of the last century, Juan Emilio begins to overcome himself. He dusts off his typist title and goes to work with a relative at the Sympathy rooftop, near the Constancia sugar mill, in Cienfuegos.

From the Peral of the South, as Cienfuegos is also known, travels to Holguín and ends the journey back to his hometown, Victoria de las Tunas, as the administrator of a red ceramic factory.

“Since I was a child - he remembers - I liked to make compositions, and then stanzas. So I was leaning towards the letters, until collaborating with the Radio Circuito station, one day they hired me in the Newsroom, along with Florencio Lugones."

“And I continued to improve myself until I took the entrance exams to study a Bachelor of Journalism at the University of Oriente. I passed and graduated in 1975.
"After Radio Circuito, I was the founder of the 26 newspaper and represented it in Angola, in the newspaper known as Verde Olivo Internacionalista."

At 77 years of age, he remains at home finishing writing his memoirs From shoe shiner to journalist, to complete a trilogy of books: Notes on the history of Las Tunas press and Chronicles and anecdotes about baseball, already published by the Sanlope publishing house.

But what has marked the most in Juan Emilio's working life is that of a sports narrator and commentator, who practiced for 40 years, above all, because of his passion in defense of the local players.

And he still remembers how the first day, the spectacular catches by Ermidelio Urrutia, the home runs by Joan Carlos Pedroso, the timely hits by Dánel Castro, the downward curves by Félix Núñez, the records of the Lord of the 400, Osmani Urrutia; the devastating rights of Teófilo Stevenson and José Gómez, and the combativeness of Omar Santiesteban.

And while he acknowledges that he went through many vicissitudes to become a professional of the press, he says he feels satisfied for having achieved it; but his greatest happiness is having his two children, Norge and Noide.

The first is a troubadour and Noide, after entering as a pioneer leader at the grassroots level and national vice president of the High School Students Federation (FEEM), was the most comprehensive in his graduation from the University of Medical Sciences of Las Tunas. And today he is a Second Degree specialist in Oncology and works at the Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital in the capital.

Now at home, with his computer, he continues to be trapped by sports in times of a pandemic, he responds to some Internet users, enters into controversy and defends the baseball team of Las Tunas known as Leñadores (Lumberjacks) with tooth and nail.

They question his argued defense of the Cuban reality, and he challenges someone in the network of networks: "You are one of those who in difficult situations only see the small spots of the sun."