When I met him, he sold cigarettes on Bishop Street in Havana.
The cigarettes that corresponded within its monthly fee assigned by the revolution. Like beans, rice, sugar, coffee and pea.
He sold them to eat. "Popular" cigarettes sold one by one. A few cents the unit.
- And you smoke?
- Yes, m’hijo, when you can.
- And then, why do you sell your cigarettes?
- Well, buy food. The thing is bad and, despite my many years, I have to continue in La Luchita.
Years ago, he told me, the fight had been another. In Sierra Maestra, next to Fidel and El Che.
He fought for the triumph of the revolution, which had to end the domain of horror and bring justice and equality to the island.
He fought and won in that fight. After the victory, before him was the brilliant future.
After the years, terminated many of the good revolutionary purposes and mired his country in precariousness, he continued to show, with pride, his old guerrilla cap. For nothing, he told me, he planned to remove it.
- I die with her.
Although things would not have gone along the path he would have wanted. Although his country continued to suffer a lot, now of different bad. And although he was forced to part with his monthly cigarette share. He had no intention of detaching himself from the emblem of his old social struggle.
- The thing is bad now. We all know that. But what I did for my country nobody will take it away.
Pepe Navarro
