From my years as a delegate to the Provincial Assembly of People's Power ─when that structure still existed and 50 percent were nominated from mass organizations and the other 50 percent were grassroots representatives─ I have an indelible image: seeing the delegates of constituencies "fight" for their bit.

Although the press did not always honor her, because the spirit of women like Haydée Coello León cannot be captured in a few letters from her Ceballos, beloved town, the sessions of that assembly were not spaces for complacency or self-indulgence. Above all, the municipal delegates asserted the authority concentrated in them to speak on behalf of so many people who were waiting for answers tens of kilometers away.

The state of the roads, the access to drinking water, the warehouses in poor construction conditions, the transport that does not reach the places where the streets end and the paths begin, the empty squares, the high prices, the attention to people vulnerable, they were always on the agenda of committees and the plenary, and no protocol or formality ever prevented, for example, Mirtha Doyle from saying what she had to say.

Moreover, if that was the case in the provincial assembly, the debates in the municipal assemblies were even more shirtless; I can also attest to it. While in the sphere of the province the issues had to be addressed in a more general way, in the municipalities things were taken down to the last detail, because, how else can people's problems be solved?

The assemblies of People's Power in the territories are a kind of modern agoras to which the representatives of the people, elected by majority, go to resolve the most diverse issues that matter to the citizenry. They have all the power of the State there in the demarcations where we live and they should be made up of the best.

From the nomination areas, we will have to propose to those who meet essential qualities: honesty, capacity for work, empathy, responsibility, desire to jump past and future obstacles (children not only of concrete material conditions, but of the easy path of justification and apathy).

The candidates for delegates to the municipal assemblies ─who will be elected at the end of November, with 50 percent plus one of the valid votes─ will have to fulfill their functions in the midst of situations so complex that not even the term seems precise. Nevertheless, they must do so with the seriousness that this same context demands, knowing that in their actions lies the credibility of the Cuban political and social system, and the aspirations of the people.

Hence, proposing, first, and choosing, later, are two parts of the process that are so defining, even more so at the end of 2022. If we let “anyone serve” prevail, “whatever is fine, if total”, the “anyone but me”, we can fall into the trap of voting for those who accept by commitment, but without committing themselves, or those who aspire to the quotas of power included in that position, who knows for what personal ambitions (if not of another nature).

The responsibility of constituency delegates can be thankless: I have seen it. Sometimes they are a missing link between the real power and the people, and in the eyes of some, they are beggars and annoying, while for others they do not resolve what must be resolved. The truth is halfway and depends on the popular support of their voters and the total empowerment of the assemblies, the highest bodies in their territories and to whom they must be accountable.

Nobody is going to give us municipal assemblies that work tirelessly for collective well-being; they will not fall from the sky. They have to be built and the foundations begin to be founded tonight. Let's look at each side and find the person who can represent us, who speaks for us, who is the first to pick up the machete when it is necessary to clear the green areas, who has all the morals to decide who gets the chicken first or the oil. Whoever understands that the constituency is the small homeland and does not hesitate to defend it?