When Lis Cuesta laughed at “the triumphs” of the Revolution

Holguin/Given the poor judgment that some make of our past, it is almost a matter of life or death to clarify any minimal friction we have had with the leadership. In my diaries there are pages that talk about my relationship with the never well-considered No First Lady and Yes First Drama of the Republic: Lis Cuesta Peraza.

It would be advisable for every “Holguinense” writer to do the same, and even some from beyond the seas, because when Lis was director of the Provincial Center for Books and Literature, she had a close relationship with her. Why deny it!

Lis and I have worked together in the cultural sector for more than two decades. We share responsibilities as members of the organizing committees of the May Pilgrimage and the Book Fair, among other events. From all that time I get the unforgettable memory of a blackout in his very apartment in the Lenin district.

My poetry collection was going to be presented Son of Greece and, on that trip to the capital, the brand new director was my flight companion through the night air of the Island.

On any Cuban airport trip, the odyssey begins long before takeoff, from the moment the route between the house and the properties near the runway is envisioned. But Lis was precise and supportive: she gave me a kind of revolutionary Uber for the kilometers of Carretera Central that lead to the place where the Frank País International Airport is located.

Cuesta shook the silent cast with a shout: —Oh, Ghabriel Pérez, the revolution has just triumphed!

At the agreed time I was at the ringing of the bell at the mansion of the daughter of Colonel Anido Cuesta, a man who became chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces in the province, better known as Colonel de las Flores. Álida Peraza opened the door to me, with whom I had exchanged many telephone conversations and whom I would finally have the opportunity to meet in person.

I couldn’t deny that the mother was affectionate. Lis came up to me, greeted me and said she was finishing packing. From his room he heard her speak, although without being able to interpret what she was saying.

Álida told me about her readings of Dulce María Loynaz and José Martí, and about the happiness it meant for her to live in a neighborhood away from the noise of the historic center. Suddenly, in a gesture of rapid inspiration, she abandoned her balance and ran to the kitchen, attracted by the smell of delicious coffee. It seemed to me to identify that pure and clandestine grain that in those times came to our homes from the hills of Sagua de Tánamo.

On multiple occasions I have returned, in almost cinematic retrospect, to that scene. Álida approaches the piece of furniture where I remain – as is my custom – with my right leg crossed over the left. He has a cup and saucer in hand and, only thanks to the juggling that has accompanied me since childhood, the nectar of the gods does not end up burning my skin or staining my white shirt.

At the precise moment Álida placed that delicacy in my hands, Colonel Cuesta’s daughter shook the silent distribution with a scream:

—Oh, Ghabrieeeeeeeeel Pérez, the revolution has just triumphed!

Indeed: a blackout!

Scheduled or not by the electric company, our brief gathering had been surprised by one of those triumphs that leave half the country in the dark.

And Cuesta Peraza, with his then excellent sense of humor and horror, shit on the historical moment and on the continuity not yet announced. That darkness was, according to its occurrence, a consequence of the triumph of what does not triumph, of the crab that walks backwards and of a Revolution determined to win again and again without turning on a single light bulb.

The husband who would end up making her the owner of all the power plants in the country had not yet come into her life.

Álida looked for a flashlight and Miguel Tamayo, that husband who has always seemed much better to me than Lis Cuesta’s current one, was in charge of carrying the luggage to the trunk of the car in which we would leave for the airport.

Álida looked for a flashlight and Miguel Tamayo, that husband who has always seemed much better to me than Lis Cuesta’s current husband, was in charge of carrying the luggage.

We said goodbye to Álida and Manolito, Lis’s son, and a little more than an hour later we landed in Havana, where a car from the Cuban Book Institute was waiting for us.

When we met the driver who would take us to Old Havana, she blurted out:

—Ghaby, I announce that I have a birthday in a few minutes.

I still can’t explain where so much confidence and euphoria came from, but the truth is that the three of us came together in the same embrace.

They left me on an adorable street in the colonial city, in front of the El Ligerito Hotel, next to the Floridita, so close to the Manzana de Gómez… It was a dangerously Havana morning, in which I felt as much a son of Greece as I was of the Motherland.

Given the threats that may be made against me, I warn that in 1959 even our beloved Huber Matos had the misfortune of being shot by the cameras in bad company.

Some time later, for Lis Cuesta, the Revolution began to triumph in a different way. I have received many of his victories with a bang. But Prima Drama allied herself more than ever to that Revolution that “triumphs,” as she herself invoked that night, for greater darkness.

Before Lis put a dictator in her heart, I appeared with her in several photographs. For example, the day I had the honor of inaugurating the offices of Ediciones La Luz, when I was awarded the Beby Urbino Distinction as a cultural promoter and that time when Carilda Oliver Labra offered a poetry recital in the Bosque de los Héroes in Holguín.

There are the images, in case someone wants to dust them off and reveal to me a past that I have never had any interest in hiding.

Given the threats that may be made against me, I warn that in 1959 even our beloved Huber Matos had the misfortune of being shot by the cameras in bad company. He had to travel from East to West, as in the trip I recount here, in the same vehicle in which the “Prima Piedra” of this never-ending drama made his triumphal entry to Havana: Fidel Castro, the first leader of the Revolution.