When I shook his hand on that only occasion, I realized it would be the closest I would ever have been to the generation that literally made the Revolution, because Commander Ramiro Valdés Menéndez was no ordinary man. Now, with his passing, we lose one of the most committed soldiers of the nation.

The man Fidel called Ramirito entered through Post 3 that early morning in Santa Ana in July 1953, being the only one of those who did so to come out alive from that select group. He spoke almost in whispers, said little and directly, but with the stark words of someone who has no fear and the eagle eye of someone capable of leading the way, without regrets or half-measures.

He rarely made public appearances. He carried out an obviously anonymous role in the Ministry of the Interior and in State Security. From that era, the first agents infiltrated among the Escambray bandits never forgot their conversations; and his colleagues from the former German Democratic Republic would remember him as a man interested, almost to the point of obsession, in the technologies that could enhance the efficient work of an institution that would be a source of national pride and of terror for our enemies.

He was a man of Che, as we remember him now; thus, it was no coincidence that he was in charge of bringing Che's remains back to Cuba in 1997. His greeting and proclamation to Fidel that he had fulfilled what was perhaps his most moving mission placed him in the public eye. There, alongside the Heroic Guerrilla and his comrades from the Las Villas Front, he chose eternal rest.

But this man from Artemisa joined the struggle before the Citizen of the World, along with many of his fellow countrymen, when the days of preparation for the attack on the Moncada Barracks shook the lives of an entire generation and countless others yet to come.

We saw Ramiro triumph over the usual bureaucrats, the "it can't be done" crowd, with his moral authority. Like that time when he settled an argument with those who were making excuses against a businessman's bold idea from Las Tunas, with his resounding, "That's what needs to be done."

A kind of aura bordering on legend grew around his life: how he would close streets to run in the mornings at a pace that gave his bodyguards a run for their money; how he did it even in his later years, when people think it's time to sit in the parks reading the newspaper... how his quick stride, his agility, his direct, eye-to-eye handshake, always surprised everyone when he came to Las Tunas.

His passing marks not the end of an era, but rather the urgency of a turbulent and tumultuous time that is now transforming, and hopefully, doing so without abandoning its roots and the respect for the silent blood that has been shed for the common good. Essences that we find, no less, in the still young face dressed in olive green, that smiles in the photo that accompanies his funeral this Tuesday, throughout Cuba.