A phrase has become recurrent in the current social and economic context of this Cuba
On social networks, quite frequently; in daily dialogue at park or street level, with people we know or have never seen; In the work environment, in many places, you who read and I who now write it, will have heard the phrase: “Oh, Fidel, how much we need you.”
Optimistic, as life shaped me since I was a child, I do not interpret those words from the perspective of lamentation or despair.
I prefer to attribute to them a sense of exemplarity, of presence, of a paradigmatic reference, something like the memory that is carried for a lifetime within the teachings that in primary education, in basic secondary or in pre-university left us that teacher who then He seemed so stiff or vertical to us and as the years go by we realize how right he was in everything he taught us, suggested, recommended or demanded.
Even so, more than once I have wondered if we are being as objective and fair as we should be when we write or express that “Oh, Fidel, how much we need you”, obviously said or contextualized at a moment as complicated and decisive as the that we Cubans are going through today, in all senses.
It is obvious that due to his universal vision, ability to see – and above all to foresee, due to that congenital gift of not giving up, of not backing down and even of not getting discouraged, Fidel accustomed us to seeing him as the voice, the source from which We never lacked the “magic” solution, the confirmation that with love, reason and truth everything is possible; never ceased to be trust in and for everything. I think that, without ever having proposed it to him, we were all, in some way, divinely dependent on his genius and his wisdom.
That is why today we evoke it with the longing that this absence, only physical, usually leaves, turned into a kind of emptiness.
The phrase sows me, however, from a personal point of view, a strange breath of dissatisfaction or at least the need to meditate to what extent we are being fair.
That today, always, under any circumstance, we will need the Commander in Chief, is an unquestionable truth. But I invite us to ask ourselves if, deep down, at the same time, we are not missing him as much or even more.
In other words: Fidel needs us very much in the current context. Fidel is going to need us a lot tomorrow. Fidel will always need all of us, because it is and will be the only way to keep him alive, to preserve, to continue concretizing, bringing to reality and enriching his work; that is, everything that he did for and for all of us from his youth.
I might illustrate this point of view in a thousand and more ways. I might refer to the duty (satisfaction, gratitude, pleasure) of each one of us, from schools, production centers, services, research, cultural institutions, sports, defense, family, management positions… what each one it corresponds to us And point!
I might emphasize that this reprehensible practice of those who lie, corrupt themselves on the inside, supposedly shining on the outside, divert resources, use influence to obtain personal benefits, steal, think they are above the society they represent or that maintains them, they use the most embellished or stark excuses for not working, they live from the business that bleeds and kills (the economy, the country), they utter rude words as citizens that their children will repeat like sponges, they flirt with the flirtation of the empire itself who pays to kill while alive, they disrespect authority…
In short, you might fill out as many pages as you have time to read… and to admit, maturely and sensibly, as true. But what is known is not asked, nor is it necessary to repeat it. It is enough that from the peaceful space of your home you internalize it yourself.
You can disagree. There is no objection or fear. But I continue, from the individual point of view, considering that Fidel needs all of us as much as we do… if we are really just, if we are sincere, if we are grateful, if we love him. And of all this –and much more– I have no doubt.
