He was the youngest of the three brothers. Talkative and spoiled. The boy who often snuck out to play baseball and always had a smile on his face. This is how Ana María describes her brother, Leonardo Mackenzie. One of the 73 victims of the CU-455 plane bombing. A 21-year-old fencer whose dreams were cut short.
“How did he discover his talent? One of those ironic things that happen. As a child he didn’t want to be in Physical Education classes and told his teachers that he would sign up for fencing because that was what he liked, and what started as a game became his life purpose,” Ana María explains, “Because in the end he turned out to be very good.”
While still at school, Leonardo competed in Las Tunas in a provincial competition and took first place. The coaches immediately realized he had potential and sent him to Santiago de Cuba to continue training. That was when his career really started, on entering the EIDE (Sports Initiation School), she recalls.
Already then Mackenzie was shaping up to be a great Olympic contender. So much so, that his results in combat fencing earned him a place as a reserve of the national team. The Ramón Fonst in Memoriam tournament of 1971 was his international debut, and from there he would follow a short but fruitful path in the discipline of foil fencing.
“At that time I lived with my husband here in Havana and he came to stay with us, in this very house. I was almost like his mother. And I also spoiled him a lot. Imagine that even though he had a scholarship at the ESPA (Higher School of Athletic Improvement) and he did not lack anything, I had to go and see him every week, to bring him food and clean clothes.
“There I was on Wednesdays, taking the bus, with a bag full of meals and his uniform on a hanger.
“His compañeros were like my children too. They gave me their shirts so I could wash them, and on the weekend I would make a family meal so they would come and spend some time with us.”
Ana María acknowledges that she only went to see him compete once. “No way! It made me very nervous, I was afraid that he would be injured, hurt, one always has that intention to protect their own, you know. But every time he won we were incredibly proud,” she notes emotionally, yet smiling.
The lead up to the Central American Games was very tense. “The entry permits didn’t arrive. I remember at home we imagined Lioni (Leonardo) was already traveling when that night he arrived and told us that no, he had to return from the airport because there were problems with the visa. The next day he left again and landed in Barbados, but from there they sent him back to Cuba again. That same afternoon he set off again. He didn’t come home again after that.”
Ana María doesn’t like to talk about it. It’s been 40 years and the pain is still there, as raw as if she had just been informed of his death. “Later I learned that they had broadcast the news on the television, on the news bulletin. But that night I was not at home, I had gone out to resolve some paperwork as we were doing repairs and needed construction materials.
“When I went down 130th Street, here in Marianao, I saw so many people gathered in the park that it scared me. There was my mother-in-law. And when she told me about the attack, I could not believe it...
“In fact, many times I dreamed of him, and although it seems illogical, unreasonable, I hoped that they would appear. It was not until they found the remains that I resigned myself to not seeing him again.”
A framed photo of Mackenzie hangs on the wall of her front room. He’s sitting on the bench. He looks happy, focused.
All dressed in white, in his fencing suit. His hands test the flexing of the foil. His protective mask rests on his feet.
Every word that Ana María professes rings with that feeling of absence, the happy memory of someone who is no longer there. All she manages to add is: “My dear! There are pains that are never forgotten.”
