Join El Moncada: When Blood is Thicker Than Water

Even more than the dirty, muddy water that still stain the walls in that Pinar del Rio community, where Ian's unrelenting rain overflowed the river, even in the areas that seem most harmless, and not even the dam installed after the more devastating impact of hurricane Alberto, in 1982.

"It rained for many hours, imagine, the houses here are strong, you never expected this to happen with the river, so we did not evacuate, girl, we had to move amidst the hurricane, the wind swaying us sideways", remembers one of the neighbors, while we were organizing in his living room the donations that Súmate social initiative, in collaboration with the private business Balcón de Bruno y Pilar, collected to aid the families hit by Hurricane Ian.

Diana, his wife, already had the list ready and helped to setup the packages: "this blouse for Amancia, an old lady who lives alone, that shirt for Carlos, who is the only one in town who wears shirts, the scanty dresses for the girls..."

Meanwhile, Diana's mother and aunt of the man who took me there, my compadre Danilo Serrano, intervened from time to time with the eye of a seamstress and rectified the size of a neighbor, she well knows that all the tailoring will be hers to do.

Clothes, shoes, hats, toiletries, notebooks and even a copy of the Great Book of Chamaquili arrived wrapped in solidarity and love from Havana to the home of each affected family in El Moncada.

What really matters is that we are still alive!

La Curra and Macambrán are 80 odds. They live alone, but that night they were accompanied by La China, one of old man’s daughters, who is always looking after "the old couple." When things got bad, the three of them went to the hut and there they spent the storm.

The hurricane took everything from Pablo: the sawmill, the mill, his source of income and the fruit of years of work, but hey, he and everyone are already focused on recovering, in the end, what matters is that we are still alive!

So we were listening to stories house by house and while we delivered the small contributions we brought, we received huge lessons of resilience and sheer will.

Monument

We didn't get to Leydiana's house, what we had separated for her family we took to Los Malagones Memorial, at the entrance of the community, because Ian also wreak its havoc there, so the hours are long for those who work in that historical site.

They had put almost all the pieces of the Museum in a safe place, but it was still necessary to wash the uniforms that are kept there and to clean a lot, everything: the mausoleum, the sculpture... The wind broke the showcases and the river forced them to take out an inch of mud. However, we could no longer predict the disaster, because no one has rested until the beauty of the most solemn site of the community has been restored.

Danilo, Diana and the lineage of Los Malagones

He is a social activist, coordinator of the Súmate Campaign, he was born and has lived most of his life in the capital, but he always returns to the town of El Moncada, where his origins are.

She is a specialist in Comprehensive General Medicine, she has taken other courses and postgraduate courses, but she remains there, she has been the community doctor for 6 years.

They are cousins, grandchildren both of Eduardo Serrano Martínez, one of the twelve men who captured Cabo Lara, there, among the hills that surround the Viñales Valley, with more courage than training or resources, the initiators of the Peasant Militias.

Despite the fact that we have been friends for years, Dani had never told me about his grandfather, I only found out when we were coming back and the doctor accompanied us to the Monument. I saw "Súmate guy" as in another dimension facing one of the tombstones and she explained: he is my grandfather, we also did this in his name.

Moncada is a town of militiamen, of brave people, they carry the lineage and blood of Los Malagones through their veins, so there’s no flooded river that can stop them.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff