On Good Friday...

On GOOD FRIDAY, 2006, I read the unbelievable news that the First Secretary of the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Havana, Mr. Stanislav Kazecky, was just expelled from Cuba by their government and must leave practically immediately.

After I stopped my involvement with my compatriots living in Latin America, I wrote a personal letter of gratitude to my colleague Mr. Kazecky, who had worked for some years at the Czech Embassy in Buenos Aires. Mr. Kazecky was very inventive in giving his time an energy to cultivating good relationships between Argentina and the Czech Republic. He took part in most Czech activities there, played several musical instruments and sang folksongs of his homeland. He contributed to revitalizing of the local Sokol organization in Buenos Aires (the only Sokol group in Argentina) and took part in their outdoor gymnastic shows. He was active in many other Czech organizations and sent some of the leaders to Czech language courses given in Dobruska. He arranged for a teacher of Czech to be sent from Prague to Buenos Aires, and got money from the Treasury of the Czech Republic to be sent to support meetings, Czech libraries, concerts, folk dance performances, to purchase original Czech costumes, etc., so that the Czechs in Argentina could show the local people as much as possible about Czech culture. All of those activities pleased Mr. Flemming, the Argentinean Ambassador in Prague immensely.

After being transferred to the Czech Embassy in Havana, Mr. Kazecky most likely started to engage in similar activities with the Czechs there. However, there he hit a stone wall and was given exactly 3 days to leave Cuba and so he arrived in Prague on Easter Sunday.