You must be brave to disarm the enemy who comes to capture you, leaving him stunned. You must also neutralize his entire patrol and escape an inevitable death with your noble brothers.
No. It is not a movie scene. It is a real event in Cuba, starred not by an actor, but by a young revolutionary named Raúl Castro Ruz, after the assault on the Moncada Barracks, while the beasts of the Batista tyranny were calling for blood, with whomever and however they could.
How not to agree with Fidel? If Raúl had not acted that way that day, with the courage and determination that Lina and Angel put in his veins, he would have been liquidated hours later, like so many others, without the right to a new dawn, to become more of a model than the name of the prison in Pinar del Río, to challenge the exile, to sneak into the Granma, to not collapse in Alegría de Pío, to reappear armed in Cinco Palmas, to put the Sierra in his pocket and found a battle front: The Second Front Frank País García.
No way! Fidel's brother and with those “thunders”, turning dirt into gold, the boy could not be liked by those who live in and from the mud. That is why the stigma of being a tough, intolerant, imposing man and a few other “attributes” that began to be attached to him is not surprising.
These young people of today, who do not carry firearms, but cell phones (perhaps no less dangerous or vulnerable in the current ideological context), must know things that do not always reach them through the desk.
For example, that young guerrilla commander, who was branded as tough, in less than ten months organized departments of Justice, Rebel Health, Public Works, Treasury, Propaganda and Inspection; he took several barracks and posts of the Rural Guard, seized lots of weapons from the enemy, organized hospitals and field medical posts, built schools and hundreds of kilometers of roads and telephone lines.
Does anyone doubt that this was the Revolution itself?
For that -and for many other qualities: cannon-proof fidelity, loyalty to principles, deep humanism, sense of duty, permanent optimism, limitless sacrifice, intransigence in the face of wrongdoings, Cuban humor, overflowing passion as a father, grandfather and husband, unconditional friend and brother...
Indeed: the brother who never failed him, the one who still believes he can clearly hear his voice, calling “let us not fool ourselves into believing that, in the future, everything will be easy; perhaps in the future everything will be more difficult”; the one who has never forgotten that unity is also “the common struggle against annexationists, traitors, corrupt people...”, and the one who, from the saddle of history, reiterated in Santiago, in January 2024, that “we will get out of these difficulties, as we have always done, by fighting!
There are 94 calendars since his arrival to the world through one of his threshing floors, in Birán. Today, Raúl’s arms are open to the embrace of the millions of grateful Cubans who will continue to show him their gratitude
