The smile and the example under a wide-brimmed hat 

Photo: Ricardo López Hevia

Those who do not know about storms -those storms that Camilo never feared; on the contrary: he was grateful, faced and defeated-, will never understand why every October 28 Cuba turns the waves (no matter if they are calm or rough) of its sea, rivers, streams, lagoons, reservoirs and any water mirror within reach of children, young people, adults, into a flowery rosebush...I have no reference of a similar tradition, by means of which complete generations take to virtual and virtuous reality the reunion with one of those sons, modestly sublime and truly illustrious, that a people gives birth to so that he never dies... So it happens with the tribute to the guerrilla commander Camilo Cienfuegos Gorriarán.The press of the time, the books of posterity and the eternal sorrow record that it happened aboard a Cessna 310 light aircraft, while flying from Camagüey to Havana, after neutralizing, with no other weapon than his presence and human greatness, a plot against the nascent Revolution, led by the traitor Hubert Matos.In what blessed place of land or sea could the little red-and-white aircraft have landed? It was never known. More than ten days of tireless and millimetric search by a dismayed, entire people, did not yield the slightest evidence.The charismatic man of a thousand anecdotes and a thousand battles, Fidel's right-hand man and trusted by Fidel (Am I doing well, Camilo?), was barely 27 years old when his mysterious disappearance took the uncertain form of death.As usual, the enemy tongue took advantage of that unhappy opportunity to weave, at the tip of a viperine needle, all kinds of fallacies that time has been responsible for turning into dust and nothing.For those who do not understand storms overcome by the values of the chest, a magnificent exercise would be to ask themselves at the point of what gun or by means of what mechanism of pressure, millions of Cubans go out every October 28 to lay flowers for the Hero of Yaguajay: town in whose capture perhaps touched top his most brilliant tactical and strategic gifts of guerrilla, or for what reason born and to be born they continue adoring his legendary figure.Let's look inside Camilo himself -and in the bosom of his humble family- for the main reason, since he hated abuse when he was a child; or when, very young, he was already enrolled in just protests against the overpowering power, or when he went to the University to demonstrate against the coup d'état of dictator Fulgencio Batista...It was not only history's will, but also his own, that he was the last man chosen by Fidel to join the daring expedition of the Granma yacht and that, without intending it, he ended the no less intrepid invasion to the West among the first and most important figures of the epic.When the "shoe is on the other foot", when it seems that everything is darkness or that there is no way out, go serenely to the coast. The memory of the smiling hero, with a wide-brimmed hat, will tell us that there is no defeat as long as there is optimism, conviction and a just cause.