Therefore Cuban women owe an infinite tear to the beautiful women from Santiago who shook homes, and opened windows and doors to redemption winds.
Vilma embraced the cause of the Cuban Revolution and gave it the tenderness this kind of processes required to make them more human. Since the harsh years in the mountain and plain, that young woman faced up with great femininity the ommissions of gender and family that hinder the freedom of the human being.
All the social work of the Revolution, regarding Cuban domestic life, has the imprint of this woman, a lady who did not mistake socialism for vulgarity and untidiness.
She always treated the Cuban people as a family that should overcome atavisms and wear its best clothes in social behaviour. A huge, democratic mother who never slept in peace and comfort in the view of the danger and pranks of the Cuban night-owl children.
Vilma did not use her origin to be comfortable. She did not take the cultural level of her family for personal conceit either. Vilma, the guerrilla woman, the fighter, the girlfriend surrounded by gunpowder and flash fire, put together all her dreams of freedom to spend her life together with the humbles and for the humbles. She stood firmly and choose the homeland. She dedicated her entire life to Cuba. She was firm, convinced, defiant, and victorious.
Vilma spared no effort to defend the rights of women, children, and young people; protecting the helpless and helping those who have lost their track. And she also defended the respect and the tolerance towards individuality and difference to achieve unity among Cuban people in spite of prejudices and suspicion.
Today, she lies among her people, between men and women who like she did; but in a different time, started to ride throughout the plains of Mayarí Arriba, those hills that know more about her life than any other criollo from Cuba. Those paths enlarged by history, with her footprints, those that are present in each Cuban woman.
Solemnity, Vilma’s inseparable fellow, dwells on each rock of the monument in her memory where each year, on June 18, Vilma’s disciples come to remember her as an active woman in combat, always defending the woman’s space.
Vilma left to the Cuba people her universal spirit, the one that Cuba is needing so much today to get stronger without losing the tenderness. Cuban new generations will continue growing up following her example and dedication to the just causes.
