2023-05-20 16:02:03
Words at the mourning farewell of Iroel Sánchez, at the Casa de la Amistad, on May 19, 2023
With infinite sadness we say goodbye to Iroel Sánchez.
He had an unmistakable name. Nobody was called like him and nobody looked like him. Had he lived until September 12, 2023, he would have been 59 years old. He left absurdly before, and the worst thing is that we did not expect it, neither we nor he, who in his last hours asked his children to pay the Party contribution to return to work without debts and made plans for the new programs of the astonished pupil to which I would return. Two days before entering the hospital, from which he did not leave alive, we talked at length about the next edition of the Patria International Colloquium, and we planned the conferences that he would not miss in March 2024.
Iroel lived, militated and wrote with the “optimism of reason and will” that José Carlos Mariátegui spoke of. That was his usual state of mind, to which another component of his existence would have to be added: an absolute faith in the people and in the transforming capacity of the human being, which came from his great passion for ideas and work. of Fidel.
Arguing with Iroel was a risky exercise, because his analyzes were not only supported by a great culture, but by a political sensibility that, together with his swordsman spirit, dealt an impeccable and withering blow to any ethical or ideological slip. Our mutual friend, Carlos González Penalva, recalled today that “Iroel is, above all, a patriot. In the Gramscian sense, he is a Party patriot.”
I remember a few years ago a debate between friends about what it was to be on the left, which began to take a paternalistic drift. Iroel closed the discussion with “hey, we are not leftist or communist out of generosity, or pity, or compassion, but because before being able to take sides for a cause we make it our own cause, and like Che we put our skins on to demonstrate our truths”.
And he did. His greatest pride was having fulfilled an internationalist mission in Angola. In the image that appears on the cover of his Facebook account, he is seen, in his twenties, dressed in camouflage on a military truck in Longa, a village halfway between Menongue and Cuito Cuanavale. Three African children escort him in frank camaraderie, and if we look closely we see on the side of the photograph the toys that Iroel and his classmates gave to the little ones, made with empty cans, nails, and wood. There he received, for his heroism, the medals “For the Defense of Cuito Cuanavale”, the “First Class Internationalist Combatant”, the “Distinguished Service of the Revolutionary Armed Forces” and others.
Later came his work at the UJC, the direction of the Casa Editora Abril in the years of the Battle of Ideas, which led him to the presidency of the Cuban Book Institute and the Organizing Committee of the International Book Fair of Havana, the digital cultural magazine foundation La Jiribilla and the creation of the Network in Defense of Humanity. In more recent years, he founded the Ecured digital encyclopedia, contributed to dozens of publications, and created the blog the sleepless pupilfrom which two books were derived, plus the television program the amazed pupilthe sorrow the sharp pupil and projects with Cubadebate: Con Filo y Squaring the Box.
He was a tireless worker, an exemplary revolutionary, the son of Nery, the husband of Cuqui, the father of Rubén and Javier, the unforgettable companion of all of us, the Cuban admired and loved by his contemporaries. Saying the latter like that, it would seem lighthearted, and there will be those who interpret it as the classic exaggeration in the face of death. But not. There is data, not opinion: yesterday’s terrible news has produced a flood of sad messages on social platforms. Many who did not know him personally, many who did and who know what kind of upright, honest, tireless, luminous person he was.
Finally, compañeras and compañeros, how painful are now the verses of Rubén Martínez Villena, the communist poet and the communist poet most admired by Iroel; those verses that head the blog of him that since yesterday has been silent:
Oh, the sleepless pupil and the closed eyelid!
(I’ll sleep tomorrow with my eyelid open!)
Goodbye dear brother
#Iroel #Cuba #journalists