"I'm so proud of being able to work hand in hand in the volunteer work with the First Secretary of the Party and President of the Republic!" wrote on Twitter Natalia. "It's not pose, it's attitude. He is the same Díaz-Canel that, when he was a member of the National Committee of the Young Communist League (UJC in Spanish), we saw every Sunday in volunteer works in work centers where he went by bicycle, whether it was in the municipality of Cotorro or Marianao," posted Iroel Sánchez.
The president was not there only in his capacity as Head of State. In the Juan de Dios Fraga neighborhood of the municipality of La Lisa, he was just another one among all the brave and noble people who gathered there to work, to make Revolution, which, as Fidel said, it’s the duty of every revolutionary.
All of Cuba responded to the call to hold one big day of volunteer work nationwide to support the recovery works after Hurricane Ian hit the country on September 27. Young people and workers, intellectuals and scientists, sportsmen and artists, workers, military people, teachers, in short, Cuban women and men, at the call of the Union of Cuban Workers attended took part Sunday in the works to recover from the damage caused by Hurricane Ian in the western part of the country. Those who were not affected also answered to the call in production works to support those who were more affected. Cuba, the Homeland, called and its people joined the struggle to recover what the hurricane has damaged and help those who suffered their effects the most.
Of course, this is a work of love, inspired precisely by the example of Che, the man from Cuba and from America, the invincible one, the man the United States wanted dead, but came back multiplied; that is why imperialism is so afraid of him. He was the one who promoted these volunteer works to help the Homeland in the tensest moments, because he was also the one who said that "a true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love."
There, in La Lisa and in the Cuba that welcomed him as a son, the Heroic Guerrilla Fighter materialized, 55 years after his death in action, in the words of the First Secretary, when he affirmed that days like these enhance "the conviction that Che is present, and that we have not renounced to build the new man."
That is why in Juan de Dios Fraga, the boss and the subordinate worked side by side to remove the debris and make the neighborhood more beautiful.
Meanwhile, in Pinar del Rio and Artemisa, the heroic electricians, as the President defined them when describing what the people had done as a feat, hung from the poles to restore electricity to both provinces, a task they undertook after restoring electricity service in Havana in record time and, without asking for anything, not even water, they left for Pinar del Río and Artemisa.
Once the volunteer work was over, Diaz-Canel listened to the people’s concerns and worries about the nation's situation. He reflected that what a hurricane damages in six hours cannot be recovered in the same period of time. He commented that it is understandable that people, faced with the lack of electricity and water, feel despair, but it is also necessary to understand that there are others who work 24 hours a day to reestablish these same services.
He thanked the scientists living in the community of La Lisa for the battle against COVID-19. He also spoke of the effects of Ian on agriculture and housing, which require time to solve them all, but alternatives are being sought as they speak, he said.
"All Cuba, I would say, has its eyes on Pinar del Río and Artemisa, but above all in Pinar del Río, which is the place with the most complicated situation," he emphasized. He described what happened there as devastating and praised the heroic work of the linemen who had already restored more than 30 % of the electric service.
"We are a family of Cubans, we can share here without any frontier of positions, origins, situations, skin color, gender; simply as free Cubans, in the socialist Cuba," he said with emotion.
This Sunday was an invigorating day because his concept of creative resistance and his phrase: "Let's join arms and efforts among all of us" became a reality for Che, for Cuba and for his Revolution. Photo: Ismael Batista Ramírez
Translated by ESTI
