When he saw him swear Mariana -after all his mother, and of the Homeland, destiny of the early oath: to die for her or to liberate her-, he was only Antonio, not the Titan. But the young muleteer, who came "from the lion and the lioness", hatched the heroism that emanated from well-molded virtues.
Faithful to the matron and, like her, he would later give, "with the story of his life, a new page to the epic". It was the promise of General Antonio threshold of that history that, inflamed in Baraguá, cut the air with a "we do not understand each other", revenge of the pride and fright of the unworthy that appeared dark in El Zanjón.
Maceo's legend is made of more than 600 military actions, incredible victories, and 26 shrapnel wounds in his body, so beautiful that not even a mortal shot put an end to it.
It was not death what happened in Punta Brava: General Antonio and his assistant, Panchito Gómez Toro, became seeds.
Thirty-eight years later, another giant was born to the homeland: Frank País, an eternal young man, a name of glory in a constellation that before was called Mella, Villena, Guiteras; at the same time Abel and José Antonio... also Fidel.
Then they were not names, but generations, soldiers of the Moncada, of the Granma, of the Sierra, of the Girón, of the Cuban Missile Crisis, of Bolivia, of the Escambray, of Africa..., combatants of the Cuban Revolution that on another December 7, barely three decades ago, and in symbiosis of past and present, became Association, high bell of the military history of the nation.
What had been until then, if not, those who returned from the war on the shield, to put, in reverence, all the people at their feet? It was 1989 the year, also December 7. How much immeasurable glory in the example of the 2,289 fallen in internationalist missions, carried on the shoulders of the country in a giant tribute!
So, had Maceo died, is he not the symbol that acts? Of the date there are many milestones, great the epic load; but as long as it resists, from the intransigent character its dead are reborn to the Homeland.
Such was the inheritance of the first titan, that one of Bronze that goes, says the poet: "ahead (...) galloping; the roads are clear".
