A Revolution Made Love

Twenty-two adolescents from the school for special needs Solidarity with Panama celebrated last Wednesday evening its fifteen years with a very special guest: the Cuban President Raúl Castro Ruz.

Very few dates in the life of a youth are remembered with more nostalgia than the night of your fifteenth birthday. The white dress, the waltz, the flowers, the pictures, the jitters, the company of the parents and the first juvenile love come together all at once in the magic moment of the toast.

And if that night is spent in an extraordinary place, then emotions reach unimaginable limits. Thus was the experience this Wednesday of April when twenty-two adolescents from the school for special needs Solidarity with Panama celebrated their fifteenth birthday next a very special guest: the Cuban President Raúl Castro Ruz.

Some in wheelchairs, others walking, they reached the dance floor with their couples. All dressed in impeccable white and joy reflected in their faces. While through the speakers were heard the names of each one of them as well as the names of their parents, their favorite songs, the perfume they were wearing, the food they adore, the music they like, their zodiac sign and the name of their fiancées a secret until then.

The physical or intellectual disability didn’t matter. As any Cuban youth at their age, they also enjoyed their fifteenth waltz. They were two girls and twenty boys, each making true their dream night.

On the side of the room Raúl made the happiness of the children and their parents his. You could see happiness and he told them how happy he was after the dance was over.

«I am very thrilled», he admitted to them. When I see things like this I admire Fidel more. In year 1989, a very difficult year for our country, he founded this school, when we didn't know how we will subsist. «For schools such as these we are willing to give everything».

«I believe it’s one of the most beautiful tasks, more beautiful and just of the Revolution», he assured to parents, family members, teachers, workers and guests who came together that night to make happy the 171 children with physical-motor limitations of the entire country who attend school there and are taken care of with extreme love.

He got photographed with the boys; he talked to them, even one of them spoke about his great-grandmother who was friend of Vilma; he carried in his arms the smallest, and asked them for their studies and he promised to come back soon.

He spoke with the head of the institution, Esther La O Ochoa, she had thanked Raúl to be there, for the happiness of her children, to carry on Fidel’s work who on December 31^st, 1989 when the Cuban families were celebrating yearend he was here inaugurating our school.

«We have loved it ever since, we have taken care of it », she said. She has devoted for some years now to make true Fidel's dream at the school Solidarity with Panama, a place where the Revolution has been made love.

Cubasi Translation Staff / Amilkal Labañino Valdés