To the memory of her parents, who are also mine
For many years now, the name Digna Castañeda has been following us relentlessly, without any possible respite, hovering over an old baobab tree on which rests the family coat of arms that her parents had given her, turning her into that woman with a tough personality, always mature, always convincing in her job of learning and teaching.
Almost taken from a page of Nicolás Guillén, her vocation was devoted to loving our things, loving our island and the fruit of its civilization, which in the midst of the 21st century, bets on the best of possible worlds.
Surrounded by books and infinite pages, Digna caresses her ebony skin, placing it in the shadow of a feeling in favor of the homeland of Rosa, the Bayamo Song, and Juan Gualberto Gómez, just like her ancestors from Southern Africa had taught her, our Africa renewed in its painful displacement.
But who is Digna Castañeda? A woman who embraced the teaching and research of our Caribbean archipelagos with the same love with which she received from her parents that lesson which still lulls her and protects her and sustains her in the purity of a noble character most uncommon, tough and fragile at the same time.
A great fan of knowledge and studying, at every minute, her eyes look over and redo entire pages of national episodes, those that connect us with the crystalline Sargasso Sea. Standing up, facing her own personal story, she relives her own, ours, that of the Third World she has defended with her only bronze shield, at the foot of the mountain ranges and the hills, by the rivers of constant liberation.
Like a sleepless little ant, Digna goes back again and again, reborn, over her efforts, under the sky of the Havana neighborhoods where she was born, looking for the hidden truth of so many forgotten events, and she assesses and listens to the marvel of the oral word at each daybreak, when roosters sing to make way for morning calls and smokes from coals return to her memory, rustic coals giving shape to the yellow little daily sweet corn cakes; those coals that took her up the wide staircase of San Lázaro to light the bright torch of her civil rights, of her radiant bright light for eternal student struggles. Between that torch and the secret whispering from the Marianas, the rich existence of this black and tall woman, slim and black and good, with a southern contralto voice – black and ours–, and for that very reason Cuban and Caribbean, like the flamboyant trees of the city in spring time, has taken place.
For many years now, I wanted to tell her these words and it had not been possible. This afternoon, as I am a step away from this well-deserved celebration, unable to be with you all, I can only invite you to enjoy the affection of her heart, all seated under the leafy baobab tree, and Digna, as always, with her ancestral shield at the ready, watching out for us, for the island, for its archipelagos and cays, for the Mainland Province, for a healthier and more possible world, with a love song on her lips.