A Cornfield in Cuba

We work wet fingertips deep into silky mud searching for roots of weeds that must be pulled for the corn to grow like it should.

Each of us has a row of our own running up the Sierra Maestra. We are all new to this type of work. Except Ezequiel from Oxnard.

He picked strawberries for 5 cents a pound before he knew how to spell his name. He’ll never eat another strawberry, he says, if the price is too low.

And it is always too low because the pay is, too. That is why he has come to Cuba, to work for free so people can eat for free.

Ezequiel is the only one to join the party, even though we all call ourselves communists back home. How could we not be ashamed of getting stuck in chocolate mud that hugs like a desperate lover?

The leathered Cuban compañero with teeth like maize doesn’t care about this and just keeps saying es un honor trabajar con ustedes.¹

He’s got his own row but helps others so he can ask questions in between the one we keep asking about what it was like to fight alongside Che.

We pull weeds with each word of praise from this man, arms like a bazooka and smile like a Caribbean sun that has broken free of storm clouds.

It took the whole day of digging side by side before we realized he really meant what he said. He, too, is an internationalist: for his forty-fifth birthday he faced down South African nuclear bombs in the battle of Cuito Canavale.

We pull weeds as best we could, ashamed at our slow pace and fatigue we can’t hide. But he knew what our meager work meant, and what it could lead to after each row is done.