By Arleen Rodríguez Derivet on August 7, 2022 from Havana
Men of fire. Photo: Ricardo López Hevia
Getting older has its advantages. Facts are looked at with the old eyes that have seen so much that they have seen almost everything and have weighed or valued with an accumulation of memories and experiences enough to scare away superstitions and save hope in the worst moments.
I think and write this as I surf between Cubavisión and TeleSur.
In the Cuban channel -as well as in the networks- young journalists are battling like professionals with a live transmission that does not stop and that at times has the black smoke of the fire in the background and at times the serene blue of the bay of Matanzas, as if a symbol of what is suffered and what is expected. With direct reports and commenting online chronicles, the boys go from one point geographical point to another of young heroism, with life stories that touch deeply and with news that clear the smoke, giving hope to the people.
I do not see a people punished or cursed by God. I see a President, a Prime Minister, ministers and generals, a Party Secretary and a provincial Governor, standing together with their people, for taking oxygen away from the fire.
I see a province that has become a country and a country overflowing into a province, in solidarity. I see a world that looks at us with admiration and respect, that offers us resources and efforts, and in the front row are the brothers from Latin America, who come to share our fate.
From TeleSur, the inauguration of Gustavo Petro seems to beckon for the resurrection of Gabo (Gabriel García Márquez) to tell what even he could not imagine: there in the center of Bolivar Square in Bogota, Francia Marquez, the first woman and the first black person to reach the Government in this country of conservative tradition, is invested as Vice President of the nation and Petro, a former guerrilla, assumes the Presidency and with an act of defiance to his right-wing predecessor: He takes out from Congress the libertarian sword of Simón Bolívar (Duque had forbidden it) and places it in the center, to announce to the planet that Colombia begins to try its second chance. And he shouts amidst applause: “Let the division of Latin America come to an end”.
So many times they said that Colombia was condemned to live in violence and Latin America to the division of its peoples, so many times they insisted that only the oligarchy rules in Colombia, that the scenes of this Sunday in the Bogota square seem more dream than truth.
No matter how much they cut its steps in the path of history, Our America insists on the Bolivarian route, again and again. It dreams of it, fights for it, announces it. Little by little it will achieve it. And Colombia is key in this endeavor.
The curse, the reverse of blessings, also has its advantages: it challenges those who do not believe in superstitions to fight them. And for those of us who have been around a little longer, it allows us to notice certain details of those who have tried to distract us with false omens and other pretexts:
There, the progressive cycle of Latin America returns with an extraordinary turn from the extreme right to the left. Bolivar and unity are finally being talked about in Colombia.
Here, a new generation of Cubans dazzles quite simply with its courage. They said so many times that all the young people are leaving, that their commitment does not exist, that every young face involved in the fight for the fate of Matanzas, which is the fate of Cuba, moves us to tears and every young person who tells it better than how we tell it other times.
Our youth exists, it is brave and it is worthy of the history it inherits.
Forget the curses. Heroes bury them.
Source: Cubadebate, translation, Resumen Latinoamericano – US