Viaje a mi tierra natal (es/en)

Hello friends of Hive. I want to take you to my hometown. Transportation is not very good. So ride with me on the train of imagination, I'll show you to the stop. This train I'm talking about is not remotely a Chinese superballoon. It is composed of freight cars adapted to carry passengers. But I am not complaining because since I was born it has been my means of transportation and it also serves as an alarm clock for the people in my neighborhood, as a clock to know the time for lunch and dinner. Look, my daughter, the 7 o'clock train has already passed and you still haven't bathed! My mother used to say, or else: the 6 o'clock train is already arriving in Pinar and you are still not getting up.

I no longer live near the train but I still hear its siren in the distance and I can't help but count cars at least in my memory. That was my pastime in the afternoons when the iron beast passed by as fast as it could in front of my eyes. I can still remember the smell of iron that is spreading the friction of the wheels against the rails and the soot of the smoke of the locomotive stuck on my clothes, the diversity of smells of perfumes, of sweats.

But this story is not about trains, is it? I wanted to take you to San Luis, the land of the best tobacco in the world where the famous harvester Alejandro Robaina lived and worked. The train is a little late but it arrives. On the trip you can see rice dams, a lot of aroma or marabú, taking over the meadows and if you are lucky some late tobacco fields, because tobacco is sown more or less from November to March, the rest is invention. I wanted to get off first in Medina, my stop, but that's not done, I won't leave you alone. I want to show you my beloved town.

How much I owe you San Luis!
My passion and my intellect
the love and affection
of the people, my root.
You have made me a happy woman
competent professional.
I always carry you with me
when I travel, study or think.
of my life, you are my favorite
and different.

Let's see, let's see, I don't want boring faces. San Luis is the birthplace of Atilano Armenteros painter and sculptor of great renown in Cuba, of Eduardo Zamacois writer, Sarah Cordoneda pedagogue and poetess. These names are of great importance but they are not well known.

But surely they have hummed that song that says: "Look at the sea wave, look at the turn it makes" or "tell me why you cry, I said to a rose, when you are beautiful and it answered me: I cry for the absence of my gardener who is the one I love and he abandoned me" those songs are by the famous San Luisenseño Virgilio González Soler. They still do not realize it? What if they have repeated: What a thing? What a thing the seamstress! Song popularized by Yeni, the former Van Van singer and she was born there, just like Raúl Paz, who sings "Nada mejor que volver a casa nada mejor que volverte a ver, no me digan que no lo conocen. "Nothing better than coming home nothing better than seeing you again, don't tell me you don't know him.

I know them from books, television, research work, but I am friends with @davidsantafe and he won't let me lie. He is the contemporary painter who shares right now his walk with the ordinary citizens of the town and with us here in hive, but this man is a painter of international recognition, member of the UNEAC. A subrealist dreamer, a magician, as the art historian Yanetsi Ariste calls him. Me, I prefer the landscape painter.

Also living here is the writer René Valdez, author of moving books such as "Bajo el agua y el sol de Buenavista", although it was written a few years ago, it seems to be of today because it speaks of emigration and its effects. I warn you, be careful not to fall into the language of Margarita Cum Cum, René's character, because she is so gossipy you can't even imagine. I bet the girls who hang around here, Alejandro Cuervo, the actor who now also has a Churrasquera where you can find everything in Havana, you have made them sigh, with those blue eyes just like those of his mother Ana, because that boy was my neighbor.

If I continue talking about the artists of the town I forget to show you the promenade of the royal street, so they call it even though the king never passed through here, it divides the main street of the town with iron and wood benches and shade from the trees. In the middle is the park and look if it is famous that here were filmed the two versions of the television adventures "The Fugitives", Bandurria ran through here. In front of the park is the parish church of San Juaquín, one of the most beautiful in Pinar del Río. Located in an elevation, it lords over the town with its bell tower. Inside it has a sober but refined ornamentation and the wood of the benches and the ceilings are of precious woods.

Is there a more beautiful church
than ours in this world?
The one that in the depths
fel chest laughs and palpitates.
She elegant, expeditious
receives with her Christian baptism
the child who wanted to have
to have God as her friend,
she bids her last farewell
in a sad commitment.

Next to it is the Girón cinema, stage of the artistic shows and where I saw my first movie in big screen, I was nine years old and the movie was Spanish, it was called "Loca por el circo", I still hum "en una pompa de jabón yo voy cantando esta canción" (in a soap bubble I go singing this song). That's the way to my old house, but now we can't go there, let's stay in the village. Although yes, let's go for a moment to the corner of the bakery, so we invite @davidsantafe to join us on this excursion through Vueltabajo that is not with Cirilo Villaverde.

David is not around, but he left us this painting for us to see the corner. Friends this painting is real, it is alive even though some of the characters are no longer alive. Then we go back to the main street, we go to the terminal to find out if there are machines or something to catch before, because the train is very late. We pass by Eladia's store which we already know, according to Bertico, the town's photographer, is not Eladia's and is called Fin de siglo.

From afar they tell us that there are no machines and we start our way back to the train stop. Before we had a glass of water at the house of the daughters of Sarín and Pepe, my first directors when I started working at the University, both very good writers, especially poets, from whom I learned a lot. In that house there was always a gathering of literature, theater, music, cinema. Oh, and always something to eat and in the cabinet candies saved for my child.

My muse is the greenery
of my beloved San Luis.
It is the palm, it is the partridge
It is the people's love.
It is the ardent warmth
of a friend's embrace.
When I have them I manage
to make an excellent verse
if it is enjoyed by the people
who share it with me.

If you want to eat something, take advantage of the corner of the polyclinic, but hurry up because now the horse-drawn carriage of "Pinto", a popular character of the town, is leaving until the bus stop, a man who smells like lightning and has more guayabitos in his head than cane grinds a central, but he is a friend of the townspeople and the town in general loves him and helps him a little. There were many interesting things to tell them about the town hall, the barracks, old houses that forged the town.

Show you the museum and the library. But do not fail to admire now when we leave the bust erected by Atilano Almenteros "To the mothers", it is a beautiful figure that welcomes those who visit the town or their fellow countrymen. Before I forget, San Luis in 2018 was declared Zone of Cultural Historical Value, a distinction given by the National Council of Heritage in Cuba. The tour is good for today, it will be another day that I will show you more things because as my father used to say: "up we go hurry up, the train is not waiting". If someone could not come with me on this train, you still have the option to read @HiveCuba and comment on what you thought of the ride. See you and let's go.

Images used in the post are my own taken with my Alcatel cell phone. English translation by Deepl Translate.