Two giants twinned by history
Two giants who share a birth date and common ideals. Two men who both, in different times, dignified our country’s past to illuminate our present and future. Two heroes of the Revolution who are June children, Antonio Maceo Granjales and Ernesto “Che” Guevara de la Serna
Author: Mailenys Oliva Ferrales | informacion@granmai.cu
june 14, 2022 10:06:32
Photocomposition: Carlos M. Perdomo
Distances matter little – in time and kilometers – if two names remain eternal in the memory of a country, fused as the same reference of integrity and courage. Two giants that history has twinned beyond a shared birth date and common ideals. Two men who both, in different times, dignified our country’s past to illuminate our present and future. Two heroes of the Revolution who are June children, Antonio Maceo Granjales and Ernesto “Che” Guevara de la Serna.
In Santiago de Cuba the first was born. It was 1845 when the Maceo family baptized the boy who would become a renowned Mambí leader in Cuba’s wars of independence.
The second came into the world exactly 83 years later. They called him Ernesto, although his memorable life would earn him another international qualification, since that little boy, born in 1928, would leave his native Rosario, in Argentina, at a very young age to heal the “wounds” of a ravaged America.
Their extraordinary lives were amazing and have become legendary.
Maceo fought more than 600 battles and bore on his body 26 scars of war; while Guevara made very much his own the epic feats of the Granma yacht, the Sierra Maestra and the Cuban Revolution, before going off to fight for the freedom of Congo and Bolivia.
San Pedro was not the end for Maceo, just as La Higuera was not for Che. We will carry the memory of the former’s firm voice in Baraguá insisting “No, we don’t understand each other” before an enemy who sought to disrespect our homeland; and the latter who, looking his executioner in the eyes, ordered: “Shoot, there is a man here.”
To them both we say, Cuba contemplates you proudly.
