Amid this diverse reality, a common desire prevails: that 2024 will be a better year

The new airs of 2024, with yearnings for new beginnings and hopes, leave behind 12 tough months. Not even the most experienced soothsayer could have predicted what we faced between January and December 2023. It was a shaky and untimely year, which left no shortage of debts amidst the siege of economic hardship, the detriment of the purchasing power of income, dwindling production, and the cost of food. Never before has inflation challenged us so viciously.

At midnight, many, after embracing those close to them, looked at their mobile screens waiting for messages and calls that would make them feel less far away because, undeniably, the year that has just ended was marked by increasing migration, which raises, more than distances, concerns and challenges for families.

If 2023 taught us anything, it was to overcome and look ahead with the necessary dose of optimism and the determination to pursue the goals we have built from our possibilities. Our neighborhoods are probably the most transformed. They have become a hive of entrepreneurship, every meter there is a new business, a garage sale, an "MSM" or a coffee shop; all examples of the capacity of human beings to unfold and reinvent themselves to achieve the prosperity we need so much.

Amid this diverse reality, a common desire prevails: that 2024 will be a better year, that we can make it possible. May our country find more encouraging times, may we not stray from the path of social justice no matter how adverse and raw the times may be; may it not be so difficult to put a plate on the table; may doctors and teachers die on their thrones of indispensability; may our grandparents never be alone and may teenagers be asked at home "where are you going, with whom? "That the neighbor continues to be your closest relative; that the man and woman of the countryside have the support to continue there, in the furrow, sowing the future; that we do not lose hope.

It matters little whether the dinner on 31 December was roast pork, chicken, or some other improvisation. The essences knock on the door and whisper health for those who do not know if they will make it through 2024, for those who have difficult struggles in life ahead of them, for those who are now stranded in a strange land, far from their loved ones and, above all, for those who have all their hopes set on these 12 months here, in the land that saw them come into the world.

If there is one thing that the new year requires, it is work, putting resources and finances where they will most benefit the collective well-being; objectivity in every decision; and always listening to the neighborhood, the bus stop, or the workplace, because that is where the pulse of credibility and the lucidity we need to make Cuba the country we want it to be.

26 would like to thank its readers for what we have experienced and what is to come. We appreciate the company, the support, the suggestions, the well-intentioned criticisms, the divergences and convergences. We are happy to count on you. There is no more valuable gift or greater success than to start the year together with you.