2023-07-26 17:21:30
They were two peasants—one from Jicotea and the other from La Sierpe. Two peasants discovering Santiago de Cuba; perhaps, the other way around, it sounds better metaphorically: Santiago de Cuba discovered two peasants, who tried to capture everything with their virgin eyes in that August of 1983. They were walking down Heredia street, when one of the two distinguished the verses that defined the city, embedded in a plate, also embedded on a facade: If you find a stone / that has not been thrown at the enemy / if you discover a street where a hero has never passed /… And without haste, the two men from Sancti Spiritus continued to plunge, up Heredia, on that Saturday night.
Days before they had visited the Moncada barracks, and on its imposing façade they saw the traces of the epic written with bullets on July 26, 1953. Juan (Borrego Díaz) was so tall that he almost touched the shots with his hands; on the other hand, I had to strain my gaze and imagine how the projectiles grated against the Batista walls.
Today, at dawn, I saw those walls again; I saw them in photos and on television images. The walls of the old barracks rising in search of dawn, furrowed by the Cuban flag, and in front —in the polygon of the former military fortress— some 10,000 Santiago men and women, the historical generation, the country’s highest leadership, other authorities and guests domestic and foreign.
Santiago de Cuba —the one of our university years— commemorated the seven decades of the assault on its heaven. It was led by a young lawyer, on whose chin the guerrilla beard did not yet shade, at that time. His parents Lina and Ángel named him Fidel. And to the Santiago commemorative evocation, he and his mentor attended —in spirit—: the Maestro; like Martí, he opted for the star and discarded the yoke.
In other words, Fidel expressed it in his self-defense statement on October 16, 1953, in a small study room of the School of Nursing, attached to the then Saturnino Lora Civil Hospital.
“It’s a pity that, having such a nice new Courthouse, you have to come to work here.”
When the leader of the Centennial Generation made the statement that morning, a hint of a smile turned into a grimace on the face of the prosecutor of Case 37 of the Emergency Court. This is how the journalist Martha Rojas, an exceptional witness in the trial for the Moncada events, would confess to me in an interview arranged, precisely, by Borrego 10 years ago.
Martha would describe to me that the day Fidel went from accused to accuser, he arrived sweaty; he wore a blue suit over which he would later wear the toga; incriminating gown that in August 1983 was not yet part of the collection of today’s Abel Santamaría Monumental Historical Complex or, simply, Abel Park, as the people of Santiago call it.
Exactly 70 years ago, Abel led the takeover of the civilian hospital, from whose back they could see Post 4 of Moncada and the rear of the military camp. In this way, Fidel conceived it in the designed plan, which included the Palace of Justice. Leading that group would be Léster Rodríguez Pérez; Unexpectedly, Raúl led the actions at the headquarters of the judicial body.
Image of Abel Santamaría reflected through technology video mapping. Photo: Omara García Mederos/ACN.
As a soldier he went to combat. Being the brother of the head of the revolutionary movement did not give him, as per, any privilege. However, at zero hour Raúl led the youth group. He demonstrated it from the moment he hit the butt of his Winchester shotgun at the door of the Palace of Justice and until he withdrew from the roof of the building, seeing the effectiveness of his positions nullified by enemy fire.
While his companions went down, Raúl fired a few more shots. Outside the elevator —wrote the historian Mario Mencía— the astonishment came: his companions were paralyzed; ahead of them, six armed men. He didn’t think about it for a second, and he took the weapon from the head of the Batista guards.
-Down! Down! Her words sounded like bullets. And her lungs, only 22 years old, ran out of air. No air.
Military, to the floor; the assailants disarmed them. That courageous man who arrived as a soldier at the Palace of Justice returned to Santiago de Cuba. And this July 26 he was seen in front of the stately yellow and white facade. Next to him, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez.
When the shrapnel cut through that early morning, full of light, 70 years ago, Díaz-Canel had not come into the world. And almost since he did it in 1960, he grew up surrounded by that history. Hence, his first words this July 26, in Santiago de Cuba, bowed reverently before the Centennial Generation, including the sons of Birán, Fidel and Raúl, born in the shade of the resistant cedars, sprinkled with flowers, sometimes red, sometimes yellow.
Hence, too, Díaz-Canel’s tribute to the heroic city, while in the sky the moon was on its way to fill with light. It is the city that two peasants from Sancti Spiritus were trying to discover that Saturday night in 1983, without yet debuting as journalism students at the Universidad de Oriente, when they suddenly saw the verses of Waldo Leyva embedded on a façade: (…) if from the Tivolí you cannot see the sea/ if there is a window/ that has never been opened to the guitars/ if you cannot find any open door/ then you can say that Santiago does not exist.
Raul Castro and Ramiro Valdes. Photo: Omara García Mederos/ACN. Diaz-Canel, Raul and Ramiro. .Photo: Omara García Mederos/ACN. Miguel Diaz-Canel. Photo: Omara García Mederos/ACN.
Featured image: The national act for July 26 took place in Santiago de Cuba, 70 years after the Moncadista feat. A video mapping recalls the events and, one by one, on the Moncada building, the faces of the martyrs of the feat appeared. Photo: Omara García Mederos/ACN.
#Santiago #exists #Cubaperiodistas