{"id":16109,"date":"2026-05-10T09:42:04","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T13:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/?p=16109"},"modified":"2026-05-10T09:42:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T13:42:26","slug":"de-madre-a-mothers-day-in-cuba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/de-madre-a-mothers-day-in-cuba\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cDe madre\u201d \/ A Mother\u2019s Day in Cuba"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Guantanamo.- In Cuba, saying that something is \u201cde madre\u201d means that something \u2014 referring to any situation, object, or even person \u2014 is really difficult, tough, and complicated.\u00a0 \u00a0I don\u2019t remember the first time I heard that expression.\u00a0 Whether it was day or night.\u00a0 Whether I was 6 or 14 years old.\u00a0 What does come to mind\u2014perhaps as a constructed memory\u2014are my own mother\u2019s lips pronouncing it word by word.\u00a0 In the middle of a blackout, upon arriving home from work, at the end of the news broadcast\u2026<\/p>\n

What\u2019s clear is that I didn\u2019t truly understand the phrase until I became a mother myself.\u00a0 \u00a0And I understood that there\u2019s probably nothing in this world more \u201cmotherly\u201d than being a mother.<\/p>\n

Because yes, when you look at your baby, you feel a deep love blossom in your chest like never before. A force\u2014wild, protective, powerful, capable of facing anything and anything\u2014takes over your instincts. It doesn\u2019t matter if you slept three, four, or zero hours; when your child smiles, it recharges your batteries to get you through another day.\u00a0 But, \u201cmotherly.\u201d<\/p>\n

My first shock was breastfeeding. I assumed it was an intuitive act.\u00a0 Put the baby to the breast and that\u2019s it.\u00a0 \u00a0Simple, I thought. However, it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Breastfeeding isn\u2019t always easy: it involves resilience, bonding, and care. Photo: Enrique Gonz\u00e1lez (Enro)\/ Cubadebate.<\/p>\n

The chill running through my body, the deep, bleeding sores, the pressure to do it, that everyone has done it before, that it \u201cheals fast,\u201d that the more you put the baby to the breast, the faster it heals.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not like that. It hurts more.<\/p>\n

As a new mother, frustration arrived\u2014in the form of fevers and trickle-in pumping sessions\u2014accompanied by guilt, which visited me for a while. Because if there\u2019s one thing that\u2019s very \u201cmotherly,\u201d it\u2019s guilt.<\/p>\n

\u201cAm I failing?\u00a0 Am I doing it right?\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily, other mothers took me under their wing. My own\u2014who didn\u2019t fully understand the situation but was still a pillar of support\u2014and two others who changed everything.<\/p>\n

Claudia\u2014with a baby only a month older\u2014pumped and froze several ounces of her breast milk and sent it to feed my baby. Is there anything more human and primal than a mother feeding another child, by instinct?<\/p>\n

Janet encouraged me and offered advice constantly, drawing on her experience as a first-time mother. She enrolled me in a community called La Leche League Cuba so I would have the support and information I needed to save breastfeeding. And if that weren\u2019t enough, she donated several cans and bottles of baby formula that she had saved. Is there anything more maternal than empathy for another mother?<\/p>\n

Memories of that time are fragmented, but the gratitude is boundless.<\/p>\n

If one thing is clear, it\u2019s the certainty that it was the first, but not the last, time things got\u2014or will get\u2014\u201dmotherly.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, on this day, I can only think of my own mother and all the others who, in the midst of such complex circumstances, manage\u2014what for others might be impossible\u2014for their children.<\/p>\n

Those who swat away mosquitoes and fan themselves tirelessly during the blackout. And yet, they get up early to go to work, to breastfeed, to love and support.<\/p>\n

Those who care for their own mothers, those who don\u2019t have them, those who miss them. Those who yearn for the children who have left. Those who worry about those who are here and their future.<\/p>\n

Those who suffer because they don\u2019t have the medicine they need\u2014or the medicine that\u2019s scarce\u2014to heal the pain of others or their own.<\/p>\n

Those who juggle everything to feed their families, to clothe them, to bathe them.<\/p>\n

Those who didn\u2019t give birth biologically and yet still became mothers.<\/p>\n

Those who teach, those who heal, those who work the land, those who build, those who innovate, those who sustain this country through countless sacrifices and efforts.<\/p>\n

To all of you, thank you for being there when life gets tough. Today and always.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

IMAGE CREDIT:\u00a0 A mother picks up her daughter from the daycare center.\u00a0 \u00a0 Photo: Enrique Gonz\u00e1lez (Enro)\/ Cubadebate.<\/p>\n

[ SOURCE:\u00a0 CUBA DEBATE ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guantanamo.- In Cuba, saying that something is \u201cde madre\u201d means that something \u2014 referring to any situation, object, or even person \u2014 is really difficult, tough, and complicated.\u00a0 \u00a0I don\u2019t remember the first time I heard that expression.\u00a0 Whether it was day or night.\u00a0 Whether I was 6 or 14 years old.\u00a0 What does come […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guantanamo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16111,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16109\/revisions\/16111"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioguantanamo.icrt.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}