As has been the case for more than a century, every second Sunday in May, a crowd of people arrive at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery in the Hero City to pay homage to the mothers who rest there, the zenith of the tradition being the laying of a wreath, on behalf of the Cuban people, at the tomb that holds the remains of the Mother of the Homeland, Mariana Grajales Cuello.

Also, in the Santiago necropolis, flowers were placed at the funeral monuments of martyrs and heroines, and where the mothers of the combatants lie; while the political and governmental authorities of the untamed province, after leading the tributes, visited those who are still alive and who, like Mariana, gave their children to the only Cuban revolutionary cause, which began on October 10, 1868.

Mariana’s consecration in the redemptive manigua, described in Marti’s symbolic text, La madre de los Maceo (The Mother of the Maceo family), transcends the story of how, on receiving her badly wounded son Antonio, and seeing the other women crying, she exclaimed: ‘Get your skirts out of here, I can’t stand tears!’Then she turned to her young son Marcos with determination: «And you, get on your feet, because it’s time for you to go to the camp!

It was not for nothing that Fidel named that platoon of unsurpassed courage that carried out heroic deeds in the Sierra Maestra as Las Marianas (The Marianas). Of the same lineage were the literacy teachers, the internationalist combatants, those who, with Vilma at the forefront, promoted the ‘Revolution within the Revolution’; so are the sportswomen, the peasant women, and all those who, to the fact of being women, add motherhood, with the indisputable stamp of Cuban identity.