At the time when the three bullets interrupt the morning silence in the Pantheon of the Fallen Ones for Defense, the calm in the chest, in the breathing… and in the eyes were broken in Ciego de Ávila. Ten months ago, the officer of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), Major Yandi Espinosa Varela, rested in the same cemetery as the martyrs whom he went to honor on December 7 so many times.

His sister and his widow cannot control the emotion and painful memory of the early departure, as the words of the speakers bring to the present the immeasurable courage and dedication of Antonio Maceo, his assistant Panchito Gómez Toro and the 2,000 returned combatants that came back from Africa with the flag on their coffins. They know it: he would have done exactly the same if history had given him the opportunity.

The conviction is as close as in the embroidered shirt with medals of the survivors of the underground and the African epic; in the verses of the singer, which one assumes intact, exact, because to whom we owe any trace of happiness.

Certainty is to be convinced that a FAR officer today is a young gunner in Cuito Cuanavale, a bearded man in the foothills of the Sierra Maestra, a “tanganero” on the steps against Machado, or a shirtless mambí under the orders of the Generalissimo in Lázaro López.

Cert is that infinite loop that on December 7 takes us to the gray marble of the pantheons to silence a flower and a thought. Moreover, vindicating the days of fighting to the death for the Homeland and Humanity. In addition, committing to continue.

AN HOUR BEFORE

This day of solemn remembrance had begun in the Maceo Park in the city of Ciego de Ávila. Just at dawn, when the same people who made a pilgrimage to the cemetery repeated the Maceo phrase that is a flag and conviction: “whoever tries to appropriate Cuba will collect the dust of its soil drenched in blood, if it does not perish in the fight”.

Roberto Alejandro Martínez Reinaldo, secretary of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) in the municipality of Ciego de Ávila, said on behalf of Ciego de Ávila youth, who remembered the 125th anniversary of the fall in combat of Lieutenant General Antonio Maceo and the 32 years of Operation Tribute, in the midst of a challenging national and international scenario for the Cuban Revolution.

At the event, chaired by Carlos Luis Garrido Pérez, member of the Cuban Communist Party's Central Committee and its first secretary in the province, and Governor Tomás Alexis Martín Venegas, the membership card of CCP and UJC militants was handed over to prominent workers from various sectors of Ciego de Ávila.

The political and administrative authorities of the main municipality, members of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, leaders and officials of the Cuban Communist Party, the UJC, political and mass organizations, the Government, and members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of Interior; in addition to a representation of students from Primary, Secondary and Middle schools.