GUANTÁNAMO.— No matter how much death pursued her, it would not have taken a thousand attempts to catch up with her in Confluentes, a peripheral neighborhood in the north of this city, where she lives, or, at the opposite extreme, in the Asdrúbal López Coffee Processing Company, where she has worked for a little less than four decades.
In any case, the Grim Reaper will have ended up tired, if one day, as in the story of Onelio Jorge Cardoso, it sets itself the illusory goal of catching this woman from Guantánamo, who is real, like her story, and has been recognized as a heroine of the work of the Republic of Cuba.
On any given day in the last 60 years, the one with the scythe would have torn it hair out when asking where Francisca, now 77, was.
At the age of 15, she participated in the first polio vaccination campaign; three years later, she taught literacy between the city of Guantánamo and Yateras; later, she donated blood for the wounded of hurricane Flora or helped the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) plant caturra coffee and make yokes for oxen plough teams.
Later, by chance, she would be a student in a course for cuppers in Santiago de Cuba. It was a happy coincidence. Of the 16 students enrolled, Francisca Holder Ges was the only woman among the four who were finally accepted.
The Coffee Company in Santiago de Cuba welcomed her and the young woman stayed there for 12 years, making her way through with her feline sense of smell, impeccable palate, touch, sight and ears in a miraculous sensory network mode in the detection of acidity, aromas, textures, flavors... up to ten organoleptic attributes of the bean that differentiate it and give it category, value and commercial and exportable range.
TO THE WORLD
Fifteen years before the turn of the century, Francisca returned to Guantánamo, to her roots.
Since then, she has been the "filter", the "human scanner" through which the coffee of the largest processing company of the bean in Cuba, Asdrubal López, passes. Her word is a reliable certifier of the quality of the coffee marketed by the company.
As a cupper, Francisca is the only Cuban with international rank in her rigorous specialty.
The good cupper is the son "of training and discipline, and also of certain privations," she reveals, "to succeed in this profession means forgetting about spices, cosmetics, cigars and a few drinks.”
"If the senses are not free of impurities, they won't be able to perceive the smell, the color or the taste." Says one who knows where the grain hides its aroma.
"This is from La Tagua," she dictates as she brings her nose close to a container of the product, "this is from Yateras,... from Maisí,... and this is from Imías.”
She is the wisdom of the trade, although she does not boast about it. Francisca has a very keen sense of smell, but she is modest.
Her eagerness to learn and teach has taken her to other latitudes: Mexico, Germany, Belgium, Japan, Ecuador…
"She is in Havana, training cuppers from Cuba, North Korea, Burundi, Panama, Nicaragua... at the Alma Mater in Guantánamo, training agronomists," it is said of her.
*****
Francisca's words are wise, natural and crystal clear. Her conversation takes me to Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Africa, Nicaragua. I travel through the Coffee Belt, I feel the climate, I contemplate the landscape, the altitude...
The monument to the victims of Hiroshima silences us: "Rarely have I felt so much pain as during this visit -she confesses-, it was very sad, the same thing happened to me when I was in the Auschwitz concentration camp. May God never repeat a crime, but it is being committed again against Palestine!”
The moment when her chest received the title of Heroine of Labor of the Republic "was exciting, I also received it on behalf of the staff to which I belong".
She does not say more about the matter, but she praises the others who deserved it on that occasion, and speaks of the creators of the Covid-19 vaccines: "They saved us".
How humble this Cuban woman is! Lucky Cuba and Asdrubal López. Lucky Guantánamo and coffee. Luck was luck itself; Francisca built it with generosity and vigilance.
