Ricardo Gonzalez was 12 years old the day the Cuban Revolution prevailed, and Fidel Castro took power. Gonzalez grew up in Camagüey, Cuba. He’s a longtime Madison resident who once served on the city’s Common Council.
In 1959, he was an altar boy at the chapel down the street from his home. “January 1 is a day of precept in the Catholic Church, meaning that day you go to mass. And so I had to go down to the chapel and set up for the mass for that day,” Gonzalez said. “As I was leaving my house, I ran into the el sereno, which is like the nightwatchman of the neighborhood, who happened to be standing right in front of our house. But my family didn’t stay in Cuba much longer. They fled for the United States in 1960.”
Once he was in his 20s, Gonzalez eventually ended up in Wisconsin for a job. He fell in love with Madison, where he opened the iconic Cardinal Bar and Rick’s Havana Club that lasted almost five decades.
Then the Mariel Boatlift got underway in 1980, a period when about 125,000 Cubans fled their homes for the United States. Of that group, almost 15,000 were sent to Fort McCoy in Sparta, Wis. At the time, Gonzalez was executive director of the Madison-based Spanish American Organization. When refugees were sent to Wisconsin, Gonzalez set off to Fort McCoy to help his fellow Cubans find sponsors.
“When we got to Fort McCoy, and I saw all these Cuban(s), mostly men, hanging around with nothing — when I saw that, I hurt, personally. I felt hurt that so many of my countrymen were in that situation. And I thought, ‘This is not right that this is happening, and what are we going to do about it?'” Gonzalez said.
But Gonzalez couldn’t sponsor everyone at Fort McCoy. He and his organization decided to focus on sponsoring families. They also sponsored the small number of single women at Fort McCoy, as well as people in the LGBTQ+ community. Gonzalez and the Spanish American Organization found sponsors around Madison for the refugees.
In 1989 Ricardo Gonzalez was elected to the Madison City Council, where he served until April 1995. His efforts to revitalize the downtown led him to become a prime advocate for building Frank Lloyd Wright's Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center, a project first envisioned in 1938 and finally built in 1997. "Monona Terrace is perhaps my most important legacy as an alderman and one I'm most proud of," says Gonzalez.
After owning the Cardinal Bar for 42 years, Gonzalez decided to sell the business and retire. He continues to be involved in the community as the founder and president of the Madison Camaguey Sister City project.