Someday we too will shoulder 60 years. My parents died when they were a bit older than 70. They had been born about 10 years before the Revolution triumphed, and my daughter’s 10th birthday will be in 2019. She will complete her first decade of life the same year in which the Revolution is becoming a “senior.”
The Revolution has been the mold of our lives. Wherever we Cubans are, no matter what we dream. The most hurtful or the most enthusiastic, the most severe or the most indulgent, those who don’t even want another year of it, and those who would still die defending it…. Everyone – even those of us who are not located in any of the two extremes – knows, or feels that the Revolution has governed our destinies.
We are children of the Revolution: noble, cunning, cultured, ignorant, humans or beasts. We are all children of these six decades that have passed between hopes and slights, between celebrated triumphs and hidden failures.
We are children of this social circumstance that some build with great dedication, while others object it and others attack it.
We know that the Revolution has not been just a government – we are already confirming that there are several mandates under its nomenclature and we already see how such different mentalities have grown under its influence.
The long-lived Revolution ceased being just a political event a long time ago to become the biography of at least four generations of those of us who have lived it.
Before these 60 years, an age at which old age begins, what ensues is a border from which it is advisable to poke. What has happened (to us) during all this time?
Life is usually short and insufficient for bodies and affections, but lasting and tenacious for History.
We know there is no History without these brief lives that we are: the succession of days, pains and joys we weave, sometimes, very much at the mercy of our contexts.
These 60 are so cellularly ours. They have chiseled our memory and there is no reason to evoke them only in the corridors of palaces, in squares or on newspaper front pages.
The Revolution has been much more than scenography or environment. For millions it was the script of their lives’ events.
These are the 60 of all Cubans; all well born on this land. Although this soil is not the one that finally covers their bodies, and although this birthday is not to their delight.
This January 1 is not a Revolution outside our existence that needs to be saved, rejuvenated, recovered: it is all of us.
