By Ana Hurtado on February 14, 2024
Although sometimes everything may seem murky to us, there is always a light that pierces the darkness. There is always a sunflower or a flower that proves that even though there may be inclement weather, what is born to live does not die.
Wherever a flower grows there is life. And Cuba is brimming with life, not only because of this metaphor, but because of a unique and indispensable essence: its people.
A country is nothing without it; not a territory, not a region. A piece of land. They are worthless if they do not attach meaning to the people who inhabit it, who populate it and work it.
Cuba is a land that is distinguished by different issues, but it highlights the morality of men and women. What is the most precious and most consecrated attribute of a revolutionary if not his morality?
Principles are not negotiated or sold, as we are used to hearing. But it turns out that when you see this phrase come true, you understand what a new human being really is, stripped of prejudices and ties and in constant construction with himself. Individually and collectively.
Our moral qualities, as Ernesto Guevara said, are our calling card. And there are three young people who, in my opinion, have an excellent business card.
Three people who appear in the documentary Donde están los girasoles (Where the Sunflowers Are) produced by Resumen Latinoamericano and which was presented last Tuesday, February 6 at the University College of San Geronimo de la Habana in the historical center of the city. The screening organized by the Office of the Historian included a high audience participation with filmmakers and protagonists, as it is difficult to remain indifferent once one sees this work.
Danilo, Devorah and Randy, photo: Nestor Marti
Devorah, Danilo and Randy are three young people with very different lives and stories. The first one is an actress and therapeutic clown in hospitals where there are children with cancer. She sees death every day, but also life. She carries life in her hands. Danilo reflects that even though sometimes life is not fair, one is the master of one’s destiny. Jean Paul Sartre said that man is the only responsible and owner of his actions. In spite of external influences. In spite of the fact that life has mistreated you. Man has the total and unexcused responsibility to choose his path. It is existentialism. And Danilo shows us how he has turned that responsibility into beauty and light. Because he leaves a sunny trail wherever he walks.
Randy is the result of fidelismo. He is a son of Cuba, who conducts every day as a delegate for her. He is what Fidel and Che fought so hard ideologically to achieve: the development of a marxist humanism that advances with each action he does. That is an example.
The three of them said Yes for Cuba at a time when the economic crisis produced by capitalism is sweeping the world. A time of emigration throughout the planet. A moment in which they decided to stay in their country, to grow individually and collectively with it. As Danilo says: “if a mother cannot be abandoned, neither can I abandon my homeland”. When it needs minds and hearts like yours.
And sunflowers are present in these stories as a path that unites lives. As a path that multiplies good deeds and takes care of those who walk it.
Randy tells me: “The sunflower in the individual is a family tie and a personal symbol that ties me to my loved ones (both family and friends that one has in life). And above all, the sunflower is a sense of strength of the nation and of our patriotism. It is the union of your feelings, of your sensitivity, of empathy, of inclusion… The sunflower feels like oxygen that comes to me when I put it in water and look at it.
It is the search for light and it will always be the virtue of Cuban men and women from humanism, soul and love. The sunflower is the soul, which physically sometimes you put it in water or put it on the ground”.
That is why Cuba goes on and how it prevails. Because it has soul. Because not many people and not many countries can be proud of having it. Because that soul has been worked with sacrifice, poetry, sweat and blood.
Because those who physically departed did it to stay.
Because the light that this island has can never be taken away. Neither by land, nor by sea, nor by air.
And that hurts many. May the sunflowers be here.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English