History of the Rieras

OUR ROOTS AND OUR BRANCHES

THE HISTORY OF THE RIERAS

The Rieras of Catalonia

Catalonia historically comprised an area straddling France and Spain, with its own language, culture, and sense of identity. Today it is a province of Spain. Although Catalan was outlawed there under the rule of Franco, it is now again in general use, both spoken and written. Catalonia’s capital, Barcelona, is an ancient port and a lovely city, second only to Madrid in its importance to Spain.

A little further south on the Mediterranean coast lays the little town of Sitges. During the summer season its narrow streets become packed with tourists and vacationers who come to enjoy the beach and the small shops and restaurants. The Rieras come from these two cities; they are fiercely proud of their Catalonian heritage.

Four seafaring brothers named Riera lived in Barcelona in the 18th century. In the middle of the 19th century was born Miguel Riera y Matas, descendant of one of them.

Riera y Vidal

When in 1980 one of the family from the U.S. visited Sitges, Spain, there was a clothing store at #11 Mayor Street. To that same building had moved Miguel Riera y Matas once he wed Vinyet Vidal in the 1870’s. They started having child after child. María de Vinyet Vidal y Martí, as she was formally called, did not stop until she had produced her fifteenth progeny, Mercedes Riera y Vidal. But first she had María, and then Cayetana, and the third time she had a male, who could take the name of Miguel.

By the time child number six, Gustavo, was born in 1881, the father Miguel had become a vintner and had his own business. Vinos Miguel Riera y Matas, authorized by permission of King Alfonso XII, has produced white and muscatel wines into current times.

Two more boys, Rafael and Pepet, were born. Two babies died at birth. One girl named Carmen died during childhood.

In the final years of the century was born Ernesto, number twelve. The house was overflowing. The first-born sons were already teenagers and working, although there was not much money to be earned. The real opportunities existed in America. Only to Miguel, El Hereu, would pass the inheritance of the wine business. Rafael had by then left for Cuba. Pepet stayed, marrying a Catalonian woman called Marina Amell. Pepet and Marina later became the padrinos of Carmita, daughter of Gustavo.

Tavo, as Gustavo Riera y Vidal was called, also set sail for Cuba before the turn of the century. He was only 17, but he had his own fortune to discover.

Soon after were born Salvadora and later Concha. They stayed in Spain. Salvadora married a Catalonian named Albertí. Concha married Francisco Jansá.

As the century turned, Ernesto disappeared without a trace. Meanwhile in the New World Rafael Riera found himself a guantanamera named Juanita. They had a daughter, María, and a son, Rafaelito.

In the 1930’s, during the Spanish Civil War, a bomb fell on Mayor Street in Sitges. The damage to the Riera Vidal home included the loss of genealogy records of the family that went back to the sixteenth century.

Tavo and Pepa

In Cuba, Tavo developed garment factories and a textile business. He married Josefa Villafuerte Valette, who was called Pepa. Her parents were José Villafuerte, from Camagüey province, and Fernanda Bordenause de la Valette, from Oriente province. Pepa herself was born in Camagüey in 1895. José’s mother’s maiden name was Baster; Fernanda’s mother’s name was Mangles.

In 1912 Pepa graduated from high school in Havana. As a graduation present her parents took her on a boat trip to New York. This was a big thing of the day: crowds would gather at the harbor to give the passengers a festive send-off. The Villafuertes knew little English, but they made the acquaintance on the ship of a young man (fourteen years older than Pepa) who traveled often to the U.S. on business and who did know English. He offered to be of help. That man, of course, was Tavo, and the rest is history. They married in 1913.

Tavo and Pepa’s first child was baptized Gustavo Riera Villafuerte, and they called him Tavito. World War I erupted, and did not end until their second child was born, María Josefa, whom they called Pepita. The family story is that Tavito (June 2, 1914) brought the war and Pepita (February 18, 1918) brought peace. Tavito always claimed it was the other way around. They were both born in Havana.

Tavo was doing pretty well at the time. He worked as a representative of American textile firms, and also owned a clothing store named “La Yarda” at the popular intersection of San Rafael and Belascoaín street. The family would travel to Spain every year, and he would buy items there for his store in Havana. When Pepa got pregnant a third time, Tavo bought and furnished a house in Barcelona, thinking they could move there to stay this time. He was hoping for a Catalan-born boy. They moved to the house in Barcelona in 1923. Pepa liked the life there: lots of relatives always getting together and enjoying themselves. The third child turned out a girl: María del Carmen (Carmita) was born March 26, 1923.

Meanwhile, Tavo’s business partner back in Havana was secretly bilking him. By the time Tavo found out the losses were substantial. They left the house as it was in Spain and returned to Cuba when Carmita was only a few months old. They moved into the third floor above “La Yarda” temporarily. Tavo shortly thereafter closed down the store. Between his partner’s fraud and the Depression, times were not so good any more. They were able to hang on to the Barcelona house for several years, but eventually gave up hope of returning. They asked Pepet, Tavo’s brother and Carmita’s padrino, to ship all the furniture, lamps, china, crystal, linens, etc. from the house to Cuba. Their arrival all at the same time is one of Carmita’s most memorable childhood memories.

After their move back to Havana, Tavito started going to the De La Salle school in Vedado. He graduated as Outstanding Student in Commerce and was sent for two more years at another De La Salle school in St. Paul, Covington, close to New Orleans, Louisiana. He learned there accounting and a perfect command of English, becoming a wonderful help to his father’s business. Almost all the firms they represented were in New York, with warehouses in Havana. Once or twice a year Tavo would take the boat to New York.

In July 1935 the Rieras took their two daughters on a 2-month vacation to Miami. Like the trip Pepa herself was given on her graduation 23 years earlier, this trip was to celebrate Pepita’s graduation from Sacred Heart school. Also in July, 25 years in the future, Carmita would be on another, much more fateful trip to Miami. This time she would be taking her own children, the oldest one being the same age she was on this trip. But we’re jumping ahead in the story.

In November of 1939, Pepita, after a fight with her boyfriend Alfonso, announced she would enter the convent to become a nun. Her father opposed such a hasty, emotional decision. Two days later Pepita disappeared. The parents tried frantically to locate her. After two weeks of silence they got a phone call from El Sagrado Corazón convent in Santiago, which is in Oriente province at the other end of the island. The call confirmed that Pepita was in hiding but would soon be accepted to start her religious training. Tavo was terribly shaken. Pepita stayed in the convent nonetheless.

Carmita was sixteen. Earlier that year her brother Tavito had married Mercy Grau. Now Mercy got terribly sick. Doctors could not pin down a diagnosis. She got worse and was hospitalized for many months. The new sulfa drugs and various other medicines were tried on her without success. She was given the Last Rites numerous times.

In March of 1940 a biopsy revealed that Tavo had cancer of the larynx, and he too was hospitalized. Pepita finally returned to visit him. In May, they operated, but within 3 or 4 days Tavo died, not yet 60. Pepita returned to the convent. Pepa, grief stricken, soon fell ill. She was diagnosed with an ovarian cyst. She too was hospitalized and underwent surgery. Staying with her at the hospital, Carmita saw her grow weak and vomit blood. An undiagnosed, asymptomatic stomach ulcer had hemorrhaged. She died in Carmita’s arms, on February 8, 1941.

Tavito

Tavito was left with his father’s business to manage; with a teenage sister alone in her recently deceased parents’ home; with an estranged sister hooked on religious illusion; and with a moribund wife hospitalized for the greater part of two years running. He threw himself into his work.

Tavo’s business had provided furniture manufacturers with raw materials for upholstery. Tavito closed it down, settled the debts, and in time opened the first foam rubber factory in Cuba.

He had moved into his parent’s house, where he kept his office with his sister. Once Mercy recuperated a bit, after some 38 blood transfusions and enough drugs to fill a pharmacy, she moved into the same house. She had been diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, and was never able to conceive. Tavito badly wanted children, especially a boy.

Mercy’s sister already had four kids. She was pregnant again when the youngest child contracted tuberculosis. The doctor would not have permitted the newborn to go live in the same house as the infected child. So, when Ana María was born she was sent to live with the Rieras. She remained for most of her childhood, referring to Mercy as her Mami. When Tavito and Mercy later divorced, Ana María was returned to her biological parents. Years later Ana María adopted two children of her own. She now lives with her husband in Houston. In her advanced age Mercy fractured her hip. She had a pin put in but died shortly thereafter, in Houston, in February, 1996.

Pepita

Pepita remained at El Sagrado Corazón for several years. Shortly before she was to take her final vows she left the convent. She then wrote a book, “Bajo El Hábito”, an exposé of the absurd extremes the nuns subject themselves to inside the convent walls. The book sold throughout the island and was translated into other languages, launching her writing career.

She wrote romance novels, many of them considered scandalous at the time for their sexual content. She herself was quite attractive as a young woman, with a slender figure and a certain spark in her eyes.

When the fever of revolution gripped Cuba in the 1950’s, Pepita left behind her typewriter and took to the Sierra Maestra to join the charismatic Fidel Castro. She became well known as the voice on Radio Rebelde. After Castro took power and redefined the revolution, she broke away and gave newspaper interviews critical of him. She went underground, and escaped the island through the Brazilian embassy. Once in the US she joined the CIA to keep fighting Fidel. She married Bernard DeLorne but never had children. He died in 1990, leaving her penniless in Miami. She moved into a convalescent home there in 1995. She died in Miami on February 6, 1998.

Carmita

Early on, Carmita showed great interest in the family business. She enjoyed math and accounting and being with her beloved father at work. He praised her work and also enjoyed her company. The textile business went international, with sales to the USA increasing after telegraph cables made communications easier. The family recovered from the economic depression experienced by the whole country.

After the death of her parents, Carmita became an excellent assistant to her brother and both struggled for years to keep the family residence and businesses going. She also helped Mercy, who came home from her many hospital stays in walkers and wheelchairs. Later she worked as a profesional publicitaria, doing market research for Procter & Gamble’s Cuban subsidiary, Sabatés.

She got to know the cienfueguero Rubén Darío Rumbaut through the Juventud Católica Cubana. One of their first date was at the zarzuela of “Luisa Fernanda”, which featured the song “A la sombra de una sombrilla”. She married him after he graduated from medical school. They had three boys right off the bat. In 1948, 1949 and 1950 were born Rubén Gustavo, Luis Eduardo and Carlos Alberto.

Tavito had by then married his secretary Rosario Sierra (Charo), and they started having kids of their own. In 1952 Lourdes Riera was born. In 1953, Miryam Rumbaut was born and Charo lost a son she was carrying. In 1954 came Nancy Riera. In 1955, Beatriz Riera and María del Carmen Rumbaut (Carmen) were born. The Riera boy did not come for another few years, after Fidel Castro had come to power. They named him Gustavo but he goes by Gus.

The Rieras of North Carolina

Gustavo (Tavito) and his family moved to the United States in August of 1960 and spent time in New Orleans, Louisiana (with Charo’s aunts) and in Miami, Florida visiting the Rumbauts. Then off to Panama to finalize their U.S. visas before settling in Statesville, North Carolina in January of 1961. Through his American business associate in Cuba, C. Edward Lentz, Gustavo secured a position at William T. Burnette & Co., a rubber batting company. The children entered public schools. Two years after moving to the U.S., Gustavo died of a cerebral hemorrhage. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Statesville. Charo, who had four children under age 10 to support and knew little English, went straight to work at Schneider Mills.

When Gustavo died, Lourdes, Nancy and Bea were in school but Gus was only four years old, so he was sent to New Orleans to stay with Charo’s aunts until June when the girls would be out of school. The following year, arrangements were made for Gus to attend a pre-school program while the girls attended school and Charo worked. Other places Charo would work were Uniglass/United Merchants and Rubbermaid, from which she retired as production control manager in 1993 after 25 years with the firm.

In August of 1966, Charo was diagnosed with tuberculosis and had to spend ten months at a sanatorium in Black Mountain, North Carolina. She was able to hire a live-in babysitter for the children through December but after Christmas that year, the children were taken into the homes of three of Charo’s close friends. The family was reunited when Charo was released from the sanatorium in June. She went back to work shortly thereafter.

For the next fifteen years, Charo put her kids through school. They are all now happily and gainfully employed. After she retired, Charo volunteered at the Iredell County Dispute Settlement Center and for the American Red Cross. She was part of the Red Cross disaster relief team In New York City during the week following September 11, 2000. On June 5, 2015, Charo died peacefully at Gordon Hospice House in Statesville, NC. Her Memorial Mass at St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church and burial at Oakwood Cemetery took place on June 8, 2015.

The Rieras are a small family. The new generation are often told at family gatherings to “be fruitful and multiply” but not until they are out of college, married, and ready for it!

Charo was born Rosario Sierra Arias in March 3, 1930. Her mother was from Galicia and her father from Asturias, both provinces of Spain. She married Gustavo in Havana on August 11, 1951.

Lourdes was born July 3, 1952. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1974, and received a Masters of Teaching degree from the University of South Carolina in Spartanburg. She married William Woodrow Winters, Jr. in Statesville on April 13, 1974. They have one child, William Matthew Winters, born October 2, 1983. Lourdes also earned National Board Certification and taught high school English until her retirement in 2013. She and her husband currently live in Statesville.

Nancy was born July 28, 1954. She graduated with an R.N. degree from the Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing. She married Lawrence Manley Butler in Statesville; they are now divorced. Their two children are Jessica Lynne Butler, born December 5, 1980, and Katherine Manley Butler, born April 9, 1985. Nancy currently works as a Medical Case Manager and plans to retire in the near future. She is married to Melton Wayne (Butch) Johnson.

Beatriz (Bea) was born July 29, 1955. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1977 and received an M.S. from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio in 1981. She married John David Swajkoski in Statesville on November 14, 1981. Their two children are John David Swajkoski, Jr., born March 6, 1985, and Mary Carol Swajkoski, born April 5, 1988. Bea earned National Board Certification and was Chair of the Counseling Department at Williams High School in Burlington until retiring in 2010. She and her husband live in Burlington, NC.

Gustavo Antonio (Gus) was born August 25, 1958. He graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1980 as a Morehead Scholar. He has traveled widely in various positions for several international companies, including Wrangler, Del Monte, and RJR Nabisco. He married Lyris Botelho in July, 1983 in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. Later, Gus received a Masters in TESOL Education and changed careers. He and Lyris currently live and teach at a university in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. They have no children, by choice.