Photo: Granma Archives
Not many people have the privilege, the health, the stoicism—and if anyone wishes, they can also add: the quintessentially Cuban stubbornness—to reach 95 years of life. It is, undeniably, a blessing.
And not just any 95 years. Nine and a half decades with his foot firmly planted in the stirrup, the flames beneath his horse’s flanks, and his machete wielded like Maceo, like Gómez.
Even a schoolchild knows that it’s Raúl: a man who (I can’t help but say it) in all the public settings where I’ve seen him, face to face with the people, with the common folk, usually ends up carrying children, chatting wittily with them, as he used to do since the decisive days of the Sierra (there’s still a photo of him crouching in front of a peasant girl making a tender history), or giving them one of the pens that he always used to give away, as he did with little Denisbel, in Guayabal, on the southern coast of Las Tunas, “so that you can write a letter to Grandpa Fidel when you learn to write.”
That has also been Raúl, the man always by Fidel’s side and vice versa, the young man who, with mature maturity, shouldered all the hardships and inclemencies of the guerrilla struggle.
I don’t know if anyone has ever asked themselves this question or considered it, but if any man resolved never to fail the Commander-in-Chief (because to do so would have been to fail all of Cuba, history, Lina, Ángel, and himself), that man was and remains him.
That’s why he faced the Moncada attack head-on—and he did, with everything he had! —the attack on Moncada, the subsequent imprisonment, Mexico, the cramped quarters of that yacht, shared with 81 other courageous men; the mangroves of Las Coloradas, Alegría de Pío, Cinco Palmas, the enemy’s might deep in the mountains, that Second Front that Fidel placed in his hands and which he transformed into a model territory, a prelude to what was to come…
I truly don’t know in how many countries the population evokes such admiration, respect, affection, and genuine identification with high-ranking military figures.
I only know that Raúl —past, present, and future generations— will always be remembered as the beloved Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, Minister of the People, with an innate martial spirit and virtuosity, an undeniable human sensitivity, a truly Cuban wit, and a charisma impervious to attacks, like the latest one launched against him by the disarmed and heartless forces of an empire that constantly loses its footing, a foothold only for those who, a little higher up, possess what a true man needs to fear nothing, never lower his sword, and never be defeated.
