February 6, 1932. Lawton begins to open his eyelids. In Pocitos St. N°. 228, however, Emilia Gorriarán has not slept a wink waiting for that third fruit of her womb. She already has two boys. She wants a girl. Anxiously, Ramón Cienfuegos, her husband, waits. Finally, the midwife appears with the baby in her arms. Another male! -she exclaims. And, after smiling, the man adds: "Well, out of three, three... Apparently, the Cienfuegos don't give up, as my father used to say. That's why it will be named after him: Camilo!
The world economic crisis has no scruples with Emilia and Ramón: Spanish emigrants who will share space, in the same room, with their sons Osmany and Camilo. Humberto, the eldest, will have to "settle" on a cot in the dining room.
If poverty defined character, Camilo would be the saddest and shyest of all the children. Not at all! He loves baseball madly, plays volleyball, swims like a fish, rides a bicycle, reads every book he can get his hands on, is kind, laughs, is a "tremendous dancer" and always has a healthy mischief in his heart, without ceasing to be respectful, responsible, humane and supportive.
"I don't think there was a boy in the neighborhood who wasn't friends with him", Ramón will say. And he is right. His affection for Camilo, and Camilo's, goes even further: he saves the pennies he gets for snacks and then gives the savings to his parents, to help infants taken in by the Hogar de Niños Españoles (Spanish Children's Home).
For this, he will open his chest in two lids of gratitude to Che Guevara, when he shares with him the only can of condensed milk that had survived the setback of Alegría de Pío.
That is Camilo, the naughty and rebellious adolescent, the boy whose pupil dilates at the sight of pretty girls, the gallant young man with his girlfriends, the guerrilla who ends up winning not only the battle of that Yaguajay who assumes him as a "son's trunk", but also the total trust of Fidel; the Cuban of a thousand and more anecdotes, the joker who in the middle of the night knocks Che Guevara out of the hammock and rides him on horseback, while the Argentine laughs like a child and repeats: "You'll pay for it, you'll pay for it...".
There he is: the author of confessions like "not even against Fidel, not even on the baseball", or "it would be easier for me to stop breathing than to stop being faithful to his trust", or "those who fight, no matter where, are our brothers", or that "You are doing well, Fidel" (with which he answered the Commander-in-Chief's question), or "to stop this Cuban Revolution, an entire people has to die".
Not for nothing, when Columbia takes over, the military of the tyranny applauds him. Has anything like this ever been seen before?
Yaguajay. As an original tribute, today the 93rd royal palm will be planted for Camilo. The planting will not be done by two, four, ten hands from there, but, in essence, by millions of hands from all over Cuba.
