The Three Wise Men never brought Mayito the bicycle he wanted. He still remembers the silent grimaces of his father when he got upset because he had left them the grass, the water, everything... and the gifts never arrived. And then, when he learned that his Wise Man could not afford his gift, he felt very ashamed.
That is the reason for his satisfaction now because today's kids "are not so fanciful to go around believing in nonsense and have their feet firmly on the ground.”
In those years he grew up early. It was January 5, 1971, when he picked up a machete for the first time in his life and found himself in the middle of a sugar cane field. Now he tells it with a smile and it seems that time is slipping away in his eyes.
He is fifty years old, but before when life forced him to work hard and without fear, he was just an enthusiastic young man, born in the neighborhood of Africa Chiquita, back in San Manuel, land of good cane and noble people.
And the man that he is knows this very well. Because he has walked the most diverse places of that area of Puerto Padre. He feels at home in La Canoa, Santa Bárbara, or La Bomba.
He made his debut on January 5 at the Guatemala sugar mill in Holguin, where he left the first sweats of his sugar life. But afterward, many sugar mills in Cuba have known his efforts; of course, none with the passion that he has dedicated to the one in his town, the Antonio Guiteras sugar mill.
"We have to rescue the cane, the harvest is our life; the places become different; there is more transportation, more joy, and the people are filled with hope.
"The country has developed a lot in all sciences; with the vaccines, one realizes how many people study and improve themselves in Cuba; however, we have to look to the countryside.
"Because it is also true that there are some people who have been getting used to good things without having to sweat; and, therefore, the places that were real sugarcane growers today do not have sugarcane. It is something that needs to be addressed in fact."
Mayito, Mario Luis Ávila Balmaseda, here you are his full name, is a passionate baseball fan and suffers to the point that his wife, the night his team loses, prefers to sleep in another room.
That's what he tells me and he never stops smiling; he always has a witty remark on the tip of his tongue and he blurts out his strongest knowledge as if he were telling a story on a street corner.
Right now, he is in the field, working on the beginning of the harvest at the Antonio Guiteras sugar mill. He hopes it won't be the last, because he will always be there, wherever he is needed.
Like him, many men and women in this country, hardened by the hard work in the fields, weave a daily and anonymous story that makes Cuba a better place.
