The dirt path winds between corrals and barns like a natural extension of his body. He moves with a firm, steady step. He stops every few meters: a fence to adjust, an animal to observe, a shadow to measure. “Time is the most sacred thing I have,” he says, and it is not a rhetorical phrase. Here on the farm, time is not managed: it is contested.

He points to a spot almost invisible to those unfamiliar with the land. Over there, he comments, stood the house where his grandparents were born, then his parents, and afterward him and his three brothers. “We were all born here,” he repeats, and his expression is not nostalgic, but foundational. He does not speak of roots as a metaphor: he speaks of real soil, of land trodden for generations.

He was born in 1968, and he states it as someone stating a biographical fact, but also a political one. “I was born with the Revolution,” he affirms, explaining that this coincidence marked his destiny. His parents, peasants, could not study. To him, however, they repeated an idea like a command: if they had an opportunity his parents did not, he had to take it. “You had to study, but without ceasing to be who you were.”

From childhood, however, the farm was his principal school. At three years old, he was already walking behind his father at five in the morning. At five, he went everywhere. “I learned to milk before I learned to write,” he states without exaggeration. He participated in voluntary work, cut sugarcane, learned that exhaustion was not an exception, but a constant. “On a farm, there is no definitive rest.”

As he walks among the fruit trees, he lowers his voice. He touches the leaves, observes the trunks. He explains that agriculture and animals were not a rational choice. “I carry that in my blood. It’s a fanaticism,” he confesses. Even so, he studied. First as he could, later as he wanted. He went to a pre-boarding school, but returned to the farm on weekends. Later he chose Veterinary Medicine, “because it was the closest thing to me.”

He studied in San José de las Lajas and graduated in 1991. He worked by day, studied in the early morning. He admits theory was difficult for him. “I had little time,” he acknowledges. But practice was another story. “For me, milking a cow or tending to an animal was the most normal thing in the world.” He does not speak from his degree, but from his trade.

He completed his social service at the Bacuranao livestock enterprise, on the Arroyo farm. He entered young and was quickly given responsibilities. By 21, he was already head of production. At 22 or 23, they wanted to assign him higher positions. But the farm kept calling. And besides, his father was ill. “My dream was always to return here,” he insists.

He returned definitively in 1993. “When I arrived, I was enchanted by the farm,” he says, using a peasant expression that needs no explanation. Since then, he has not left again. Not even when political responsibilities began to grow.

In the year 2000, he assumed the presidency of the cooperative. He replaced his uncle, the historic president, a founder alongside his father. “I was young,” he recalls, “but the cooperative doesn’t wait for you to mature.” He has been at the helm for 25 years since. He describes it as a difficult, complex life, especially in an urban environment like Havana, where productive areas are small and pressure is constant.

“We didn’t start with anything,” he clarifies. “I didn’t take over a saddled horse.” Everything that exists on the farm today—corrals, barns, animals, projects—he created with sacrifice, day and night. “There has been a lot of sweat here, many sleepless nights, and often little time for family.”

As he speaks, he runs his hand over an animal’s back. He knows it. He says that farm work does not tolerate amateurs. “If a guajiro tells you he has no work, he’s not a real guajiro.” He gets up at four or five in the morning. Many nights he goes to bed past midnight. “Here, you work from sunup to sundown.”

He explains that livestock farming is even more demanding. Planting can wait. Animals cannot. “Rain, thunder, or cyclone, you have to tend to them.” That is why he affirms that being a peasant today is one of the most sacrificial trades. “If it were easy, everyone would be in the countryside and food would be plentiful.”

“Farm work, I believe, is one of the most sacrificial, most devoted jobs; you have to like it and carry it in your blood. A true guajiro feels it that way.”

The farm, he insists, is not an individual project. It is family. His wife, his brother, his mother, his nephew, the hired workers: all sustain what exists. “No one can do this alone.”

Parallelly, his political life grew. The ANAP recruited him young. He was a provincial delegate in 1998, a deputy later. For over 20 years, he served on the organization’s National Committee and participated in three congresses. He represented the Cuban peasantry at international events, including the People's Summit in Mar del Plata. “Everything I am today, I owe to the ANAP,” he states plainly.

“I have a great commitment to the Revolution. Because I owe everything I am to it. I was able to study, to graduate, to return to the farm. And yes, journalist, I have been able to have a farm thanks to the Revolution. If it had been before ‘59, none of that would have been possible, because that’s what my parents always explained to me. My father would have wanted to study, but he never had the opportunity.”

Since the year 2000, he has also been a base-level delegate. An urban, atypical community, which he knows in detail. “For me, the most precious thing is time,” he repeats, explaining how he divides it between producing and representing. “I have never disengaged from the farm, but I have never failed to attend to my constituents.”

He recalls when the neighborhood had no water. They lived off wells, carrying water for hundreds of meters. With institutional support and collective work, they managed to bring water to the community. First from a leak that had been wasting water for decades. Later, with a major rehabilitation. Today, water arrives every day, even to neighboring areas. “That was a feat,” he says without false modesty.

That way of doing—resolving—earned him prestige and commitment. “Nothing is impossible here,” he assures. “I don’t know how many years it’s been since I’ve read what my duties are as a delegate or as a deputy; because for me, everything falls to me. If a water pipe breaks here, I’m the first one to go fix it. If an electrical cable breaks here, I’m the first one to go. So, nothing is impossible here. We will do whatever is needed.”

He makes no distinction regarding schedules or hierarchies. “If a constituent comes, I stop whatever I’m doing.”

He clarifies something he considers essential: in Cuba, delegates and deputies have no privileges. They do not receive a salary. They get no benefits. “Everything we do, we do from the heart.”

“We neither earn a salary nor receive any personal benefit for holding any responsibility. I stop working on the farm to attend to my constituents and go solve a neighborhood problem. I stop working on the farm and go complete a task for the National Assembly or the commission I’m on.”

Amid the crisis, he sought alternatives. For years, he has been selling meat from his production at a moderate price to the neighborhood population. “I wouldn’t feel right eating pork on the 31st knowing my people have nothing.” He sells to everyone, without discrimination.

He recounts how many mothers leave his farm with eggs, yuca, or a piece of meat when they need it. “People must be helped when they have the most problems.”

As a deputy, he defines himself first and foremost as a guajiro. He says he even forgets about his degree.

“When people see Interián there in Parliament, sometimes in a suit and tie, they think he’s just another deputy who left home and went there. But for me it’s not like that, I have to make an extra sacrifice on Assembly days. Get up much earlier, get ahead a bit: often I even milk and then shower and run out under pressure to the Assembly, and I always arrive ‘just in the nick of time’ before the session starts.”

In the Assembly, he says, he focuses on the topics he knows: agricultural production, efficiency, production chains. “I don’t talk about what I don’t know,” he clarifies. “I talk about what I’ve done all my life.”

“I have to be in the National Assembly contributing, always giving ideas, suggestions on the topics I know, from real life; because we are tired of criticizing that what is directed up there, in the country’s leadership, in the ministries, when you review it at the base, bears no resemblance. So, that’s the task that falls to us.

It is to check and control that what is directed, what is dictated by the country’s leadership or the ministries, is fulfilled at the base, because in the end, where are the results achieved?: at the base,” he affirms.

A recent intervention generated controversy. He recognizes three reactions: counter-revolutionaries who distort; immobile traditionalists who cling to the past; and the majority who understood the message. “I have not asked for capitalism,” he insists. “I have asked for efficiency.” He defends cooperatives, MSMEs, individual producers, the state enterprise. “We have many valuable people in our country.”

“Whoever heard or saw the complete intervention must have realized from where we began the analysis and what we wanted to refer to and what we want to say. Because we are the voice of the people in parliament. And we represent the people and we represent the Communist Party of Cuba.

We cannot allow months to keep passing and months to keep passing and we have things that the country’s own president, the Assembly’s own president, alert us about day after day.”

He mentions Vietnam, China. “If they have changed to sustain socialism, how can we not change?” He says the greatest danger is delay. “We cannot keep thinking as we did 30 years ago, nor 20, nor 10, nor 5 years ago. Because in 2019, the situation we had in Cuba is not what we have today, not even close.”

“I remain here on my farm working day by day with my morale very high, with much prestige, with much courage, and with great desire to keep saying the things we have to change. The country’s leadership is clear and is alerting us every day that we have to change a great many things. And if we don’t make those changes, then undoubtedly, yes, we will lose the Revolution.”

“What you see in the plenary is one part of the Assembly, but the enriched debate, the truly strong debate, we develop in the commissions, which is where proposals are made and all things are said. And so, we must have a National Assembly that is up to the level of our people, up to the needs of our people. And that is the path we are on.”

Under a vast grove of mango trees, Interián talks about future projects: mini-industries, fruit processing, locally produced animal feed. It pains him to lose mangoes while juices are imported. “It pains me not to have compotes for children.” His dream is for his municipality to consume what it produces.

When he speaks of Cuba, he pauses. He looks at the farm. He looks into the distance. “Cuba is the greatest thing I have.” For him, saving it is not a speech: it is getting up early, working, producing, telling uncomfortable truths, and not giving up.

“Time is not enough for me,” he repeats. But he keeps walking.

The sun begins to set over the farm and the animals seek shade as if they, too, were measuring time. The dirt path falls silent again, interrupted only by the rustle of the wind and the slow movement of work that does not cease. Here, at Purísima Concepción, nothing happens by accident: everything has to do with enduring.

It is not just the name of a farm. It is a way of understanding life. A purest conception of duty, work, and responsibility for others. From this land, where several generations were born and where each workday begins before dawn, the country is pondered without hollow slogans and defended without stridency.

Tomorrow, as every day, time will again be contested early. And as long as there are animals to tend, neighbors to wait for, and land to answer to, Purísima Concepción will continue to be more than just a place: it will be the living proof that there are those who chose to stay and fight.