Yellow ribbons of renewed hope (+Video interview with René)

HAVANA – Thursday morning, Cubans will wear yellow ribbons on their bodies, and the island of Cuba will decorate in yellow its houses, vehicles, public and private buildings, and even its tall royal palms.

The invitation to perform that gesture was made by the Hero of the Republic of Cuba and former anti-terrorist agent of the Wasp Network, René González, who, on the morning of Wednesday, along with his wife Olga Salanueva, wrapped a yellow ribbon around the trunk of the venerated ceiba tree in El Templete, Old Havana.

The purpose of that peculiar act is to remind the people of the United States of the 15th anniversary of the imprisonment of four of González’s colleagues, incarcerated in the U.S. after a judicial process that was and is “a political case, a sterile and futile vengeance upon the Cuban Revolution,” as González described it.

González, who served his long term, told Progreso Weekly that the idea came to him one morning as he recalled a song he used to hear in his youth on a U.S. radio station. The song, Tony Orlando’s “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree,” was also popular in Cuba.

A man with singular charisma, González was greeted Wednesday by those at El Templete. Ordinary citizens, book vendors, sanitation workers, an unlicensed vendor of candy who kissed him on the cheek, and a group of Argentine tourists who recognized him.

In a lively chat with the South Americans (to whom he laughingly refused to tell what he and his wife had done right after he arrived in Cuba) René said that, while he was infiltrated in terrorist groups in Miami, he met several Argentines involved in the Plan Condor, which took the lives of hundreds of other Argentines.

Those people “are still free in Miami,” he pointed out.

Speaking with the Progreso Weekly team, González said that, during the development of his initiative, someone asked where they would find yellow fabric. Another person answered, with the inventive spark that characterizes Cubans: “We find a white sheet and dye it with Bijol [food coloring].”

The idea has spontaneously spread in Havana and even on Wednesday we could see yellow strips hanging from balconies throughout the capital.

Cubans in Miami will imitate that voluntary act, René said.

“I’ve learned that people over there are going to display the ribbons,” he said.

Note: Progreso Weekly is preparing a video of the conversation between González and a group of our journalists.

Progreso Semanal/ Weekly authorizes the total or partial reproduction of the articles by our journalists so long as source and author are identified.