Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Washington, Feb 23.- As your sister from a suffering United States, I tell you: we miss you, expressed the writer, poet, and African American activist Alice Walker, honoring the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, in the year of his centenary.
"Thinking about what I admired most about you, I remember, first of all, your love for children," said Walker, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983 for her novel "The Color Purple," which was adapted into a film of the same name, first in 1985 by Steven Spielberg, and then in 2023 by Blitz Bazawule.
That feeling for children was manifested in shoes, schools, food, and shelter. But also how you liked to joke with them, added the writer in a text published on social media.
I remember photos of you playing with them, to show how US leaders assumed they only had to say jump for Cubans to ask how high? You would turn the tables on the children, making them jump every time someone said Yankee! And another would ask: How high? she noted.
You taught them - she pointed out - not to be discouraged by reality: the small size of Cuba, compared to the enormous United States, and its supposed superiority.
Highlighting that "this year we celebrate your centenary (of Fidel)," Walker emphasized that there was something in his tireless resistance that invited us to keep fighting "for food, justice, equality, the freedom to love and whom to join in the battle against the greedy forces that devour us."
She noted that Fidel (August 13, 1926 - November 25, 2016) was an expert at fostering the growth of great spirits throughout the world. Wherever people felt minimized by the oligarchs who devoured them.
In her text, Walker highlighted the value the Cuban leader placed on women's equality and confessed that, beyond his political or social innovations, what moved her about his personality was his love for reading.
"In particular, your relationship with one of the great literary masters of our time, your friend Gabriel GarcíaMárquez," added Walker, who is also a member, among other honors, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
"I was amused and loved to think of you there, in the presidential palace (which you surely secretly renamed), without boots or glasses, pencil in hand, reviewing and editing the fabulous novels of one of the world's greatest literary imaginations," she concluded.
Alice Walker (Eatonton, Georgia; February 9, 1944), is also an essayist, university professor, screenwriter, actress, film producer, and climate activist. Throughout her career, she has published 17 novels and short story collections, 12 non-fiction works, and collections of essays and poetry. (Text and photo: PL)
