At home we already prepare ours. Three cans that we have kept for I don’t know since when, a piece of prehistoric cotton and a little gasoline that a neighbor gave us: everything ready to light the torches again, which is to turn on lights and illuminate reasons, old reasons from Martí for not giving up on humanism, of faith in human improvement, of living with a country and without a master.
I don’t remember the first time I walked with a lit torch on the night of January 27. I do know that I had a blue scarf and that I passed in front of the Parque de la Libertad in my native and beloved Matanzas. I can also assure you that the next day I woke up early and dressed up, perhaps as Pilar or Piedad, some character from The Golden Ageand I went back to parade in the same place, tirelessly, because Martí was born, and with him the certainty that children are hope and that “the first duty of a man these days is to be a man of his time” .
Since then, there have been many lit torches of ideas, of Cuban identity; ardent anti-imperialism; luminaries for solidarity; guides to continue building. Many times it was Fidel in the first row. Now I share them with my children and another faithful man goes before them. Then they take on a new meaning for me: more than tradition, continuity; the light of Marti that multiplies and confirms itself eternal.
“Men are like the stars…”
That’s what Martí wrote, and added: «…some give light of themselves and others shine with the light they receive». In these days when some of us prepare to remember the Master with symbols of light, there is no shortage of those who, dazzled, do not even manage to get close and shine, because they are busy looking for the shadows.
Cuba is going to march. The young and those of us who are not so young will do it; so will the children, my healthy and proud children because they are not the exception, but the rule, in a country that has been the only country in the world to safely and sovereignly vaccinate (with its own immunogens) the pediatric population from two years old
Without tooth, Martí already said what is the best way to say. What has been done: 1.6 million boys and girls vaccinated; 3.3 million doses administered; zero serious adverse events and immune response superior to that of adults. In addition, at the gates of starting the intervention among children under two years of age.
Adding to adults, almost 34 million doses had been administered at the end of January 24, according to data from the Ministry of Public Health, which means that 87.7 percent of the Cuban population has a complete vaccination schedule, and with at least one dose we are well over 90 percent.
In order not to overwhelm us with figures, I only remember that the number of booster doses is also increasing and that researchers from the Pedro Kourí Institute (IPK) have already verified that Abdala and Soberana have the capacity to generate antibodies against the omicron variant.
From the side of those who love and found…
In addition to powerful reasons to feel safe (never trusting, always careful), these are also reasons to feel deeply proud and committed to the Revolution that Martí inspired, with the idea of homeland that the Apostle bequeathed to us; to light torches in his honor and also, why not, ask him to continue to illuminate us on the long road to being fairer every day, not to let us switch to the side of those who want to turn off all the lights, those who hate and undo.
To love and found, to love and found again and so on, we light torches every January 27th. Because Martí was born and with him the sap of freedom, honor and light, made by hand and soul, “with everyone and for the good of all.”
