This November 25 will be three years since his departure to immortality, and it seems to us that time has not passed, because we see him every step of the way. Here or there, his presence is unavoidable. Upright, with quick and confident steps, he goes through each corner of this Cuba that he loved so much.
Riding his Rocinante, adarga and lance over the shoulder, always fighting battles against injustice, ignorance and for the full dignity of men and women that live in this world so full of inequality, selfishness and meanness.
His humane solidarity feeling leads his redeemer arm, builds bridges and not walls between the peoples, spreads love and not hate or resentments, shares his wisdom, plants and fertilizes his liberating ideas, loves sovereignty, independence of nations and his inhabitants, and is able to fight for them to his last breath.
I am talking about Fidel, the Cubans’, the one with the universal emancipating thought that reached his honorary place in modern history and that will last inextinguishable in the memory of men and women throughout the centuries while there is humanity.
That is how enormous we Cubans see him, because his presence does not fit in our small island, it surpasses our borders and is taken over by every human being of good will that have a right to a better world and that know that it is possible to conquer it, as he foresaw.
If we feel him always here, next to us, is because there is not a single space that this beautiful and extraordinary work that he made in Cuba that does not have his signature, where ever he was, is his indelible, unmistakable mark, merged with the solidity of steel and that no enemy, as mighty as it might be, can destroy.
Since he never took a truce if there was something to be done, today he is still in combat for the construction of socialism in the Homeland to which he rendered all of his energy, since his early years, effort he never gave in until he saw it free of a cruel tyranny that he knew how to defeat, first with weapons, and then with his advanced and creative ideas.
His word and efforts made him leader of the science, technology, preservation of the environment, international peace, peaceful solution of conflicts, civilized relations among governments and nations, of solidarity and friendship among men.
As he does now, Fidel was always in the front line, with no concession of principles, without backing down an inch in the defense of the ideology of Martí and Marx that he defended, and in the territorial integrity of the country against the aggressive hostility of the American imperialism and its minions.
This is why we are still here, for the capacity of resistance that he made us with and that continues to feed us, for the bravery that he taught us and the disposition to fight against everything that wants to take away from us all of our rightful conquests that we did not win in 150 years.
If we said goodbye three years ago, it is not because Fidel Castro Ruz left, the goodbye was mostly symbolic, showing how much we loved him and how much we still do and that he will forever live in our hearts, of this generations and all the ones to follow, whether Cuban or from other origins.
- Translated by Elianna Díaz Mendieta