You never met them, never exchanged a word with them, they are not your relatives, friends, or neighbors, but their loss hurts, it pierces your chest, it brings tears to your eyes.
At first, there is a number that, although painful in itself, cannot be compared to the moment of seeing a face, a name, a glance, a human being. You understand then that you are bound to them by a bond that is not of blood, but as if it were, for one unquestionable reason: they are Cubans.
Our pain may not be comparable to that of their mothers, wives, children, grandchildren, and dearest friends, but Fidel also said on a mournful day: pain multiplies. Yes, that happens when the concept of homeland is so sacred that, taking it to the individual level, we compare it to home, and those who take shelter in it, to family.
That is why we call them brothers, and we do so sincerely, with an open heart, because we feel them as such, even more so knowing that they are martyrs of duty, recognizing in them—through their trajectory and in light of the events that stole their lives—a legacy of loyalty that makes us proud and broadens our Cuban identity.
Also in light of those same moments, the enemy's face was glimpsed, without masks, without ambiguity. It rediscovered for the world, for us, its unquestionable fascist genetics, its colonial scaffolding, its imperial usurping vocation.
Then you feel a tightening in your soul, and the heroes you carry in your heart overflow, because you know that 32 of your own are no longer with you, that they have been taken from you, victims of the arrogance, cowardice, and selfishness that have corroded empires, the empire, since their inception.
And you want to embrace their mothers, their wives, their children, and tell them not only that you share their pain, or that you mourn their loss, but that you too have lost someone, that you feel the same way, and that you will never forgive those who took them from you. That there are millions of us who do not forgive.
Because this people who today mourn their fallen, because they have the right to do so, who today observe minutes of silence, who accompany their final farewell, continue to be the same "energetic and virile" people who do not forget or dishonor their brothers and sisters, and who will make injustice tremble every time it questions their principles.
Today, all of Cuba will be an embrace, a farewell. A part of our people has fulfilled its last mission with dignity, has fought its last battle with courage. Adding theirs to the examples that guide us, the rest of us will continue to stand, aware that we still have great battles to fight.
