Santiago de Cuba - As it has been happening for more than a century, every second Sunday of May a crowd arrives to the Santa Ifigenia patrimonial cemetery in the Hero City, to pay homage to the mothers who rest there, the zenith of the tradition is in the deposit of a floral offering, on behalf of the people of Cuba, before the tomb that keeps the remains of the Mother of the Homeland, Mariana Grajales Cuello.
Also, in the necropolis of Santiago, flowers were placed at the funeral monuments of martyrs and heroines, and where the mothers of the combatants lie; while the political and governmental authorities of the untamed province, after leading the tributes, visit those who are still alive and who, like Mariana, gave their children to the only Cuban revolutionary cause, which began on October 10, 1868.
From Mariana transcends her consecration in the redeeming manigua, described in the symbolic Marti's text, The Mother of the Maceos, in which it is told that, when she received her badly wounded son Antonio, and seeing the crying of the other women, she exclaimed: "Get out of here, I can't stand tears!"; then, she addressed her little son Marcos with determination: "And you, get on your feet, because it's time for you to go to camp!
It was not in vain that Fidel named that platoon of unsurpassable courage that carried out heroic deeds in the Sierra Maestra as Las Marianas (The Marianas). Of the same lineage were the literacy teachers, the internationalist combatants, those who, with Vilma at the forefront, promoted the "Revolution within the Revolution"; so are the sportswomen, the peasant women, and all those who, to the fact of being women, add motherhood, with the indisputable seal of the Cuban identity.