We are talking about love…

“Nobody interrupts the rite

we want to love in peace

to say in a scream:

Cuba makes progress!”

Have you ever felt that a song is hovering around in your head all day long and no matter the time of the day, you just want to hum it no matter what? Well, that has been me the last of couple of days with this beautiful song that came to life in the Nueva Trova movement.

Between personal anguish —I have three beautiful nieces in Puerto Esperanza, the spot where hurricane Ian left the national territory while leaving huge devastation—, I feel great sadness because I have taken very seriously the fact that other people lie conveniently: “Cuba belongs to all,” so I feel every drop of pain my land is experiencing, but I am very proud when I see artists, my brothers, such as Kcho or Raúl Torres, visiting and working along with those people who do not entertain in the Wailing Wall, probably because they have lost so much, that regrets are pointless. They have learned, however, that the shortest path to recovery is to working together, sharing, giving, and receiving every piece of love coming.

And this is precisely the kind of love we are referring to, that love of men and women, boys and girls, human beings. On one hand, there are people with no electricity for a week, but it is not the end of the world as they did not lose their refrigerator, or fan, or their roof, or bed to rest; so they choose not to rest and build the pieces of people, rebuild what can be restored, they look for solutions and trust.  I cannot say everyone choose to trust, but there is a belief that when “the situation” gets messy, good things are yet to come.

Along with them, Cubans who, with no electricity nor water supply, got out to join forces as they could: Arnaldo Rodríguez and his Talisma, paid tribute to Pinar del Río; a group of young people called “Ángeles nocturnos” went to Pinar del Río and collected food, personal hygiene products, and in the words of its leader, Daniel Abnel, “with lots of love. So they know Cuba’s heart beats with them;” a diplomat put on his boots, closed the door of his apartment, and went off to Puerto Esperanza because first of all, “e need to put all of our love to Cuba first and foremost.” My friend’s husband, who is a civil worker in the Armed Forces, forgot about his heart condition and joined MININT officials in the city cleaning; a Havana’s teenager could not celebrate her birthday in the midst of drama and soothed her mother with a phrase: “don’t worry mom. Celebrations are not important. I have everything, now there are lots of people in Pinar with no home.”

And there were also other girls across the country who, at that time, were far from home as they were climbing poles repairing power lines, or communications; mothers who bit their nails thinking about the threats posed by the works that their brave children do, fulfilling their duties. They perhaps lost their food, but they still prayed the saints to protect their children.

On that same side were my neighbors and the kids from my apartment building, who went down to clean the garden, "to do something"; the lady who cooked the chicken and delivered it to the block; that incredible family from Alamar who found a way to charge the cell phones of those who were nearby; Luis Franco, the singer-songwriter who did the same with his electric bicycle; the workers of several hotels in Havana who charged nothing charging cellphones...

On the other side, there were people who did put a price on solidarity, as if that were possible; those who turned the legitimate right to claim their rights (forgive the redundancy) into indolence and selfishness; those who believed, like the vain villager, that the whole world is their village. The opportunists are on the other side, those who stab you on the back, those with the kiss of Judas, the fools who do not trust their land, the mercenaries.

In the middle of it, people were left without electricity and, sorry for the frankness, some had no lights to discover the manipulation…There were also people exhausted, stressed, desperate people...

And in the meantime, this whimsical song reminding me, minute by minute, which side I chose:

Maybe some machete

gets tangled in the brush

maybe some nights

the stars do not want to leave.

Maybe with arms

you have to open the jungle

but despite the sorrows,

whatever:

Cuba makes progress!

Translated by Sergio A. Paneque Díaz / CubaSí Translation Staff