Guantánamo.- Luis Ramírez López died here, on duty, on May 21, 1966, while the afternoon said goodbye and the night replaced it. Perhaps the young man did not imagine the outcome, although the context foreshadowed it.
At the age of 22, more than anything else, one thinks of giving body to those utopias that flutter in front of one's eyes. But, if the motive is sacred, one's own dreams can be put on hold to defend those of a nation.
In front of Luis, on the opposite side, the Yankee relay post. The boy, as on other occasions, was in danger.
It is said that he remained serene, without provoking; but alert and firm, because that was what the moment demanded.
That was what Fidel had requested six years earlier, when he praised the courage of our soldiers on the border, and encouraged them to have "a very straight line and a very patriotic posture". This is how they have proceeded.
Neither the gringo provocations seeking to justify an aggression against the Island have been able to drag them down, nor have they allowed the repugnant usurper to sully the free land of Cuba. That position, molded by Fidel's wisdom, was very clear to Luis.
As usual, that afternoon-evening of that May 21, he had arrived punctually to his watch. Soon, the shot, the mortal wound....
Many people in the world were shaken by the crime.
The trigger pulled by hatred, that day, with its dramatic consequences for our families, repeated the crime of two years before, when a projectile from the Yankee base killed another young border guard.
"This is a crude, cynical, disgusting, repugnant formality with which he intends to cover up a simple act of aggression based on the most impudent lies," Fidel denounced at the time.
It is said that a loose leaf in Ramirez López's FAR membership card had a phrase from the book Heroes of the Fortress of Brest written on it, perhaps with Cuba's determination: "we will fight to the end."
