Car in hand, Yuliet Reyes Vega does not stop walking. Her work as pantry manager at the “Nicodemus Regalado León” Municipal Hospital in Buenaventura demands responsibilities. “She is dynamic, demanding, but I like it, I feel good,” confesses this young woman with a soft voice, but at the same time with the ability to add and commit. “We are a team, two men and I make up the work shift and nothing, ready and willing to do what we have to do.”
"As every job has challenges, I am in charge of distributing food to patients. This requires dedication, dedication, love because above all it must be on time and with the required quality," says Reyes Vega, but nothing is foreign to women. and if difficulties appear we look for solutions to continue, that's how Cubans are.”
And if we talk about disposition and industriousness, Aurora Morales Parra has a lot to say. “I am in charge of the hospital clothes, collecting them for the laundry, arranging the premises like this one where we are now, which is the medical staff dormitory, keeping the 8 beds ready, and whatever they need me for is 15 years. “If we have to clean, that's where we go because we live in complex moments with the staff and collaborating is up to all of us and women are distinguished by the fact that we don't know about schedules or tasks.”
[Vicenta Aguilera Pupo demonstrates her skills in the trade.] Vicenta Aguilera Pupo demonstrates her skills in the trade.
Very close to Aurora, the laundress Vicenta Aguilera Pupo demonstrates her skills in her trade that has opened paths in her life. “I like washing, I came here thanks to an opportunity that was given to me through a job fair held by the Municipal Labor Directorate and here I find myself helping with everything and willingly.”
And so Yuliet, Aurora, Vicenta, among other female faces, often anonymous, build, forge, contribute and give lessons. There is the invincible work of the Cuban women, empowered and conquerors of impossible things.
And when I see them as they come and go between premises, hallways, patients... I remember the verses of Jesús Orta Ruiz (El Indio Naborí) when he expressed in his poem “Mujeres”: “
It comes from that immortal mother Mariana Grajales,
with hers eleven colossal
men of the same ideal.
When she turns coral
a diamond from the rock of her,
there is not a sob in his mouth
nor a tremor on her lips;
and she says to her youngest son:
Get going, it's your turn.
