Luis Felipe Gutiérrez

Trainer of Kid Chocolate and Giraldo "El Niño" Valdés, Cuban boxers.

He is not fascinated by these fishing boats that he will inherit and his father shows him Surgidero de Batabanó. The waves. The foam. The sea. The men under the sun. Fish hooks. Fishing nets. The catches. Luis Felipe Gutiérrez loves another realm: that of the jab and the upper cut, whether as a manager, writer, or functionary.

As a young man, a javelin thrower; hence his nickname Pincho which is now his name and pleases him. Rower, alongside Julio Antonio Mella, in the canoe of the Centro de Dependientes, national champions. The rebellion of the leader is planted in his soul and grows with time. His family sends him to study in the United States: his greatest university was that of… boxing. It would navigate through his arteries forever.

He directs outstanding figures of the ring: Black Bill, Relámpago Sagüero, Vidal Gregorio, Mateo de la Osa, Victorio and Valentín Campolo, Ignacio Ara, Canadá Lee, Baby Joe Gans, and even participates in the earnings of the great world bantamweight champion, the Panamanian Al Browns. His star, Kid Chocolate, who convinces him of that special light upon defeating on two occasions another of the fighters in the squad under his command: Johnny Cruz. He and that immortal little Black man born in El Cerro complement each other: there is no Pincho without Chocolate nor Chocolate without Pincho. Guide of professionals, he cannot escape the business: he passes through swamps and the traces are few. Honest, sensitive, he is an exception in a terrible trade.

From New York he writes to a friend: "Everything here is false and I feel like leaving it all and returning to Havana where one breathes the air of sincerity. Everything here is arranged with money. Feelings are manufactured with money and so as not to be infected by that human forgery I shut myself up in the mornings in my office on Broadway where I dream of freeing myself one day from these people I cannot resist."

In the capital of the homeland, during a rest, he understands that the air stinks as never before because of the Machado regime, and those fighting for the triumph of decency are persecuted, thrown behind bars, murdered. He supports them. He tells Chócolo: "Let's go, we cannot be here. They already used us in the reception they gave us and I do not want this anti-popular regime to keep using us."

They leave, but not before he says goodbye with a public letter in which he exposes the tyranny. Comrade of the communists, he aids them monetarily and in various actions, in different stages. By the mid-50s, a reporter would write: "His rebellious attacks are not of recent date. Around the year 30 Pincho—who needed nothing then—was already engaged in revolutionary activities."

Very notable his quarrels with racketeers and magnates in the United States. These are the words of the Kid: "In the street, he was more of a boxer than I was. What a man, what a man!" And he would never forget that between them there was no signed contract: "It was not necessary. Between us there was more than enough. Pincho, my friend? No, more than that, much more than that: my brother, my father. If I had heeded him on many matters…"

January 14, 1957. A certain chest pain does not drown out Pincho's smile at reminiscences, much less his courage. In his house in the Almendares neighborhood, he searches for words for a commentary against the tyranny. Declared adversary of the Batista regime, he has suffered prison for it. Harassed, the doors of work closed to him, he is left with the radio commentary Verdades Deportivas. His health, broken; his morale, intact. The pain increases… Collapse! Pincho collapses. In the typewriter, the article remains unfinished—an article that lashes out at the evils of national sports and reaches beyond: it strikes at the dictatorship and its foreign masters.