Orístides Guardarrama Dávila was born in La Gloria, an intricate mountain community in the heart of the Turquino Plan in the municipality of Yaguajay. He also worked in the province of Sancti Spíritus, at the Venegas livestock farm, one of Cuba’s flagship livestock companies.
One day he travelled along the Turiguanó-Cayo Coco causeway and joined the support staff of the construction brigades building works for tourism. However, the beauty of the Jardines del Rey, the Jardines del Rey resort in Avila, did not win him over for good.
He confesses to having found the love of his working life in Morón. His wife Norkys, who encourages him to do the impossible, is not jealous of this relationship.
The reason is that, in the City of the Rooster, 10 integral postmen take on the duties of 16 approved postmen on the staff of the basic business unit (UEB) of the post office. One of them is Orístides, who tells us: «Alfonso Lorenzo Palmero, our renowned postman, is active here and inspires us with his example.
This lack of manpower has an impact, but does not demotivate him. «I am in love with this very humane work, I provide home delivery services to 111 people on social assistance, and our UEB extends this service to 100 % of the people covered by this system.
«We recently agreed at the members’ meeting to gradually increase the payment of the chequebooks in the homes until we reached all the pensioners, and today we are managing 60% of them,» he says as general secretary of the trade union section that brings together the 21 workers of the organisation.
Orístides is reluctant to talk about his personal values: «I prefer to talk about my group because of its dedication, especially that of Nailia and Yamilka, from the central post office, and Eglis, from the unit of the Patria Popular Council, who are all the managers who provide services to the population at the counters.
«In addition to selling stamps, processing money orders, food pensions, telegrams, letters, collecting electricity, distributing newspapers, receiving parcels and other activities, they have everything ready every day for the postmen to go out and carry out their work at home».
On behalf of the workers, she has a challenge: «Salaries are the biggest concern, today we only receive the basic salary, 2,500 pesos for the managers and 2,640 pesos for the postmen, a financial problem for the company that we have to solve.
«Some time ago the situation was more complex in terms of resources, today we have new bicycles, uniforms, work shoes; and we have better organised the workers’ guard, which prevents crimes from occurring, the centres are not left alone even for a minute».
It has been, according to him, «the best stage of my career, because when I am absent for a short time, customers ask ‘what has the guajiro done, where is our postman’, and this is precisely what motivated me to fall in love with this job».
