It is an honor to greet the leaders of our Caribbean, a sea that we share as a cradle and a challenging home, where we count the hours with more haste, due to the passion that derives from its heat and its strength that stops hurricanes, increasingly frequent and destructive, and also due to the rise in sea level, as a consequence of climate change, which we ourselves did not even cause. I follow the spirit of my people, who first send enthused gratitude to the hosts, as we are in Jamaica, where, in the late nineteenth century, far from the hatred of the Spanish metropolis, Mariana Grajales found refuge, the bravest of our women and Mother of the Nation, whom “God has invested with the rank of General,” in the words of another front-line fighter, the wife of her son Antonio, the unsurpassable Maceo. Here our Mariana, who died on Jamaican land 125 years ago, and today rests in the patrimonial cemetery in Santiago de Cuba, found refuge and received José Martí. Jamaica is very close, geographically, historically, and humanly.
