Light and defiant, the petals descended against the light and settled like butterfly wings in her memory. It was a shower of faded flowers, a torrent of oleanders, bougainvilleas, roses, and sunflowers that flew from the small balconies with their curved railings, the high doorways, the stairways tumbling down to the street, and the narrow sidewalks of the shuddering city.

The girl remembers it like suddenly witnessing a rainbow. All the city's emotions were wrapped up in that shower of flower fragments, in the tremendous and tender insolence of that gesture. It was a risk taken with the certainty of danger, for in the shadows of the bedrooms, the interior gardens, the living rooms, the flower-filled patios, the shelter of the arcades and colonial roofs, and also outside, from plaza to plaza, from road to road, from market to market, from alley to avenue, and from park to park, all the inhabitants of the eastern capital already knew the horror and the massacre at the barracks. The corpses appeared everywhere and were a sad and painful testimony to the fierce repression.

The girl who looked up at the sky and watched the rain of flowers fall didn't yet understand what was happening, but she perceived the clear challenge of the waterfall of silk and colors, the affectionate language with which the people of Santiago demonstrated their support for the young men who only a few weeks earlier had attacked the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks. The bus snorted up the street from so much weight, from so many soldiers guarding the detained youths, from so many deployed weapons, from so much fear expressed in the overflow of troops, feeling stalked, threatened, harassed, or fearful of those who were simply being transferred from Boniato prison to the High Court to participate in the trial in which those who were against the Constitution and were coup plotters—the henchmen of the dictatorship—were following those who then dreamed that José Martí would endure in his centennial, in the very life of a republic of dignity for all good people. The bus was then lost in the cloud of petals that enveloped it as it passed.

The one who remembers the story is now an older woman, and she recounts her emotion as if reliving that torrent of affection, admiration, and aroma with which the inhabitants of Santiago embraced their heroes.

Listening to her, I didn't ask her name, but I imagine her as sensitive and one of those essential beings who magically dwell among us with a modest simplicity. That afternoon of conversation, I promised I would write about the forgotten challenge, and now I keep my promise. I think of the petals of Santiago and remember the poise and determination with which many of the mambises fought in the wars of independence. They did so by putting their skin to the Mauser bullets and ultimately winning through the powerful determination with which they charged forward, inspired by a passion for freedom and contempt for oppression. Countless were the soldiers of the Liberation Army who went unarmed into battle, and the noise that accompanied them was only the scraping of the desolate pots tied to their waists as they advanced through the fire.