With our hands, to build. All hands; the poet Guillén said, the blacks their black hands and the whites their white hands. The collective work requires possible and joint skills. Just as necessary for the country are the hands that touch a belly and anticipate illnesses, like those that, dusted with chalk, write numbers and letters on blackboards. How urgent are the hands that dig into the earth and plant seeds and extract roots! How definitive are the hands that express will!
With the body, to hold. On the shoulders carry the weight of the Island and continue with a lighter step the more arduous the path. Walking, which is the only way to live. «Put the chest», as we say before what requires courage, and face the consequences. Embrace the idea of a better and possible future within the homeland, which will always expect maximum effort from its children.
With the heart, to drive. A “bomb” at full force that, like a sign of falling in love, runs wild in a wild race towards what is loved. You have to fall in love, truly, with the dream, yes, and with the realization of that dream, even more. Understanding that fulfilled desires do not fall from the sky nor can they be sufficiently blocked if, in the face of scarcities of dissimilar nature and almost perennial validity, the tenacity and stubborn optimism of the irreducible prevail.
With the mind, so as not to err. There is no time left to waste on alchemy. The call has been to think among all, throw all the intelligence into the ring, put them at the common service. It is not work for work’s sake, like the oxen that lost their vigor furrow up and furrow down. It is about working with your eyes on the road, of course! but feverish to reach the goal. At the finish line, therefore, there will be no magical elixirs or outdated copies of other races, in other places. At the finish line there has to be that sip of water —vital reward capable of restoring life—, metaphorical and real water that allows long-winded runners to return to the route, time and time again.
These are our answers to those who might ask why go to the square on the 1st. May, in the midst of the most complex daily challenges. We will say convinced that we are those long-term runners —we have been from the beginning of what social scientists have called “the Cuban”— driven more by an idea and the moral obligation not to give up than by having the optimal conditions for the attempt.
With the stubborn self-sacrifice of the irreducible, we continue to wake up in the streets, the furrows, the offices and the factories, aware that no one will come to give us prosperity. Prosperity, development, the welfare state, by the way, are not entelequias that only enunciating them manifest themselves, even if we deserve them. They must be built meticulously and without wasting a day.
That is the call. To the country, hands and heart, body and mind. Willingness, precision and opportunity.