My Brigadista Year

Rafael w

as standing by his father, watching us and pretending to be grown up.

I got up and went to him. “I’m afraid I’m just a crybaby, Rafael. Not brave like you.”

He blinked and wiped his sleeve across his face, then quickly straightened up. He stretched out his hand in a very manly fashion and shook mine. “Vaya con Dios, Lora,” he said — go with God — and then added in a whisper, “Will you write me a letter, too?”

“Of course,” I said. “We’re a team.”

I made my way through the crowd to where the Acostas and Bonita had found a spot to wait. They dismounted and embraced me and told me I must come back again. Perhaps I might live in their house the next time. I hugged them and stroked old Bonita’s nose.

“Be sure to keep studying,” I said.

“Of course,” said Joaquin. “I am going to write many more letters to Fidel. He will be amazed at my progress.”

Luis waited until all those good-byes had been said, and then he came and kissed me on both cheeks. “You have given us a new life, Maestra,” he said. “I will thank you every time I write my name.”

I began to cry in earnest then, but the driver called to all of us who were lingering to get on the truck, that it was leaving. Pronto!

Hands came down to help me up onto the crowded truck bed, but I didn’t try to sit down. Even if they could not see me, I wanted to wave to my beloved family until the truck turned the first bend in the track and they would no longer be able to see my hand in the air.

On the long bumpy ride to the train station, we were mostly quiet. We could never have dreamed in April how sad we would be in December.

The truck took us all the way to Cienfuegos, where we climbed up into open train cars for the last leg of our journey home. While most of us had sat silent on the truck, a few of us still in tears, no one even wanting to whisper, the scene on the train was a different story.

The warm December sun was shining down on us as we clacked along, and we soon began to turn our hearts toward home. Girls who had makeup dug it out of their rucksacks and began to put on lipstick and maybe a little eyeliner. I took out my comb and pulled it through my tangled hair. We were laughing at ourselves. Inside we felt so utterly transformed, so changed from the children we had been nine months before, but somehow we wanted to look as good as we could on the outside when we met our families. I knew that my mother would be appalled at my skin, now as brown as a coconut. I feared she would never escape the old-school prejudice that prized fair skin in a woman. I looked at my rough, calloused hands and asked anxiously if anyone had any hand cream, but no one did.

As we got close to Havana, the air became electric with excitement. The word was being passed around that the new slogan — the banner we would carry in the parade on December 22 — was Vencimos. We have conquered. We have prevailed.

When the train pulled into Havana, I was only one of the thousands of brigadistas pouring out of the train cars and into the street crowded with families. I wondered if I would ever be able to find the ones I was searching for. But my clever brothers had made a large sign, WELCOME HOME, LORA DÍAZ LLERA, and put it on a long pole. I spotted it before long and wriggled my way through hundreds of uniformed bodies to throw my arms around them. My entire family, including Abuela, who hardly ever left our house, had come to the train station. It didn’t seem to matter to anyone what I looked like. I was safely home. My mother didn’t even mention the condition or color of my skin for two weeks, and by then the deep tan had begun to fade, anyway.

On the shortlist of the best days of my life was the Vencimos parade, culminating in the gathering in the Plaza of the Revolution. There we gathered, more than one hundred thousand strong, looking up at the memorial to José Martí. A few of us were waving banners picturing an open book and proclaiming ¡Vencimos! The rest of us were carrying pencils, huge pencils, almost as tall as we were. I was delighted that my assignment was to carry one of the pencils. I only wish I could have sent my giant pencil to Rafael as a memento.

We were like an army of sharpened pencils marching into the center of the capital among our flags and banners. Around our necks we wore red scarves, across which were printed the words Territorio libre de analfabetismo — Illiteracy-free territory. We were the first country in the Western Hemisphere that could make that boast.

We had done it. We had overcome our own fears as well as the illiteracy of our fellow Cubans. How could any of us ever forget that day?

This is the song we sang as we marched to the Plaza of the Revolution:

We did it, we did it, we did it!

We triumphed, we triumphed, we triumphed!

Cuba told the world we would

And we accomplished it.

Forward the people of America,

Forward with socialism.

Cuba in only one year

Conquered illiteracy.

Fidel, Fidel,

Tell us what else we should do.