"Martí spoke little, the march of the torches was about Trump"

Havana/A swell of Olivo Green Caps flooded, on Monday night, the staircase of the University of Havana. At the feet of the famous statue of the Alma Mater – sometimes a symbol of education and civility on the island -, officers and army cadets made their way to the crowd, which prepared to start the march of the torches.

In the Havana of Miguel Díaz-Canel there is very little of the Martian symbolism that inspired the first walk, in January 1953. Then, a group of university students among which was Fidel Castro-which attributed the idea of ​​the candles, in reality of the Future Cultural Commissioner Alfredo Guevara– and his brother Raúl, invented a ceremony with religious dyes to remember José Martí in his centenary.

Now, Havana are clear that the center of attention is in the north. “Marti spoke little, that was about Trump and the list of terrorism sponsorship countries,” he told 14ymedio A disappointed Young of the University Student Federation (FEU), which joined the rapid disruption at the end of the ceremony. The motto of this occasion says everything: “always anti -imperialist.”

Instead of the torch with sharp nails that, supposedly, Raúl Castro wielded that night – they hoped the repression of Fulgencio Batista, which never arrived – this Monday, what stirred was a Cuban flag enclosure. It is enough to travel the photos of past marches to see the decline of the general nonagenarian, as consumed by decades in power such as Ramiro Valdés or José Ramón Machado Ventura, which escorted him yesterday. It is the march number 72 that you have to attend.

The march turned Havana, for several hours, a total chaos. “There was too much traffic diversion. I think they exceeded that, ”another young man told this newspaper, which cost him work to reach the university esplanade. “From Boyeros and Carlos III there were already horsemen running the transit. When you got off by g, you could not bend right or 25 or by 23. It was almost reaching the right fold. They had ‘reserved’ several apples. ”

In a country submerged for more than a year in a worrying fuel crisis, the means to transport students who were going to participate in the event were not lacking. The caravan of vehicles extended along 23rd Street, in El Vedado.

As it is, in theory – despite the strong military presence -, of a university act, the main attendees were the students of the University of Havana, the Sports Institute (INDER), the Technological University (CUJAE) and that of computer sciences (ICU). A student from the pre -university Rosalía Abreu, from Cerro, told this newspaper that he attended because he was one of the “five who fish for each classroom.”

“A friend of mine came the same,” he added. “At least we leave, we bought a bottle and we turn after the march.”

The students were received, on the esplanade, a warm environment in which they predominated – altavoces through – the usual voices: good faith, Silvio Rodríguez, Sara González, Pablo Milanés. The voice of Annie Garcés – the singer who, despite the sponsorship of the regime, did not just connect with the Cubans – scared many of those who expected the beginning of the march.

Cadets of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Interior – some with total neglect of its uniform, to underline the “informality” of the call – cordoned off the area, whose buildings were freshly painted, even those that are in danger of collapse.

Until the speeches arrived, the stage was that of a party, with dances and drinks. The media speak of “thousands of young people” on the march, but the leaks in each street or corner decimated the procession very fast. “There were people who left on L l”, in the immediate vicinity of the University itself, confessed to 14ymedio One of the “escape.”

“In other times, at 7:00 pm there was no single person in the square,” he added. “Now, nobody cares that Raúl and Díaz-Canel have been.” The march remains, as usual, shoes and pulp -burned with fire that, by accident, was falling on the pavement. Also lots of cans skewered in sticks, with gasoline plague, thrown in the streets of El Vedado. They are the remains of the “Martian torches.”

Between blackouts and faces, the general mood is not for ceremonies. So much, that the cover of Granma This Tuesday – in which an illuminated Havana is seen with powerful LED spotlights, whose streets marches the main flat of the regime – sounds like a joke or protest: “The light that Cuba always needs.”