I had to go see it against any challenge. I did not want to imagine it behind the legend or resurfacing like the phoenix after being burned by its bravest sons of independence. Nor did I want to assume that it was colored with crowds in its main streets and shops. Simple, I wanted to savor its reopening, just a few days away from adding another year to the calendar of life, 225.
It beats, more organized than other times. Clean, with its hot and refractory boulevards, in the way of giving light from the depths of the earth. People do not walk so fast and are grouped; yes, as if the messages that this deadly virus sends are still incapable of creating an individual and collective conscience that allows, in the face of daily challenges, an irreversible signal of sanity.
It is Las Tunas, brave and in love, captive and liberal, old and rejuvenated. It mixes the Congo and the Carabalí, the sculpture and the décima, the mountain and the people. It is the precinct of the confessed and hidden poets. She strips naked with her doors open, besides crusades and victories. It does not hide its sadness. It does not disguise inertia or slow down its impulses.
Two centuries, two decades, and five years seem like a skirmish of time to achieve pending dreams and count the stones that generations and generations, born or arrived here since the history of the Cueybá region, its founding origin, dodged. Horses, mystics in their ancient fantasies and the experiences of its epic memory, trot, pull the cars. Now it is not ridden by a headless Indian, nor is the steed white. They are elusive among its streets, with their drivers willing to alleviate the demand for public transport and even help transport goods.
The COVID-19 is a monster that embraces my city on this anniversary. I walk. I remember its awnings and those old houses that hide their ghosts in the walls of memory and the ink of the poems and books that draw it or try. It is beautiful, despite the children who have marched, the daily battles to win the faceless enemy of the 21st century: the terrible, heartbreaking global pandemic. But I admire its daily secrets, the hope, and the strength. The motherland is standing, battling.
I sigh. September is a month of grace and glory for Las Tunas. Women do not lose their smiles behind protective masks. Men wave their duties and accompany. This birthday is not the same as the others. These are not party times or tumultuous orgies, but the city grows and goes with its high heels. The heart rules and love breathes through these corners of the future.
I do not doubt it. The 225 years that fill my city with life come from fire. We will not be ashes. We are more and the touch is of victory. We want it better, renewed, and undefeated. Here we go. I had to go see it against any challenge. Each one has given it a soul. We will win. Happy Anniversary! Thanks for your open doors. Again, we are all lucky.
