Eusebio Leal Spengler: one of the mosr real and useful Cubans of our times

I can assure that I have seldom felt as sad as I feel today, nevertheless, speaking about Eusebio is always a privilege. It is difficult because Eusebio’s scope, variety, richness, originality, boldness, rigor and greatness that I have to confess that these words are but a very limited approach to one of the greatest Cubans of all times.

I have found in very few people -as I found in Eusebio Leal Spengler- the harmonic way to articulate such various components of knowing, feeling, loving and thinking Cuba.

I could tell you his work is grandiose; however, I do not think it would be too original if I’d tell you that he is Doctor Honoris Causa and Professor Emeritus in 20 national and foreign universities; he has delivered academic and keynote speeches in over 74 universities in no less that 45 countries, placing Cuba’s scientific and cultural image at the most egregious academic spaces all over the world. Also, he has been awarded important decorations from at least 29 nations.

However, all those titles and decorations do not express the essence of the man who was born in a Havana city slum, who earned a living as a pharmacy Messenger and who had an unusual culture before graduating from college.

His essence was that of a man from the people, who wore humbly a workingman’s clothes, who walk around Havana speaking to each of the simple people who approached him and who dreamed of rebuilding to provide the present with the extraordinary dimensions of our history. Simply put, a great man from the people.

He has been awarded the most important titles, the most important ones, those that are not written on parchments, not bestowed by academicians but hose titles he loves most and acknowledges, the titles vested on him by the mass of impressed and grateful people, not by the words but by the reduction of the weight of the stone and the brick or the stony, life-giving construction of the work.

This is more filling than the pupils, the broad and sharp minds and the sensitive and noble hearts before the exorbitant wealth of the urban and human salvage of the imprint of the men who built Havana’s image or the image of other Cuban cities and places that we enjoy today.

Eusebio’s work, first thinking, then organizing and later on materialized spiritually and culturally, which we all can see in our pilgrimages around Cuba and its capital, is already recorded as World Heritage.

His leadership of Havana’s City Historian Office, comprises the restoration and completion of 80 cultural heritage works, 14 hotels that remind us spaces and times of Cuban culture in different times, all gathered as one in the present that sees one hundred tourist facilities and 171 social buildings, to which we should add 3092 rehabilitated houses. All that work in 10 years and I do not include here what he did during the past five years.

When talking about his work he always singles out, humbly and gratefully, the importance of Fidel Castro’s dialogues and support for his achievements.

Eusebio Leal is one of the most fruitful writers of our time. The number of his works is surprising. We are talking 3 531 records up to 2010. I make this remark as there are 10 years of intellectual production missing in the volume of works, we referred to. The ensemble is quite varied: articles. Leaflets. Printed speeches and books. They are all the product of knowledge acquired in the tireless searches that seem to indicate there was no time for resting or, more adequately put, to the enjoyment of time in growing inside to help others find ways to identify themselves and identify with their own culture.

Some titles, books in this case, are a necessary legacy from a time, apparently far away now but that speak of a yesterday world that explains in a certain way today’s world. These are splendid remembrances which are part already of our history.

Books like Kids, Hope founded, Never to Forget, Legacy and Memory and the Lost Diary of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, are undeniable contributions not to a dead history but to the living thought of our country’s living thought of present and future creativity.

There is a literary genre which is difficult to master, oratory. I don’t think I exaggerate if I state that Eusebio’s oral speech is already one of the most important legacies that will be subject for study over the next years. Oratory is one of the most difficult genres as it gathers the knowledge of a topic, the elegance of speech, the beauty of language, the harmonic logic of content, the poetry to delight and the dialectics that teaches.

Like very few in our most recent history, Eusebio Leal has developed oratory in a very extraordinary and personal way. He has contributed the art of speaking, to the Academy and to the dais.

I remember now the day I met him, handling a wheelbarrow and his exclusive way of dressing with gray working clothes.

Those archeological and historical searches made many to think, jokingly, to think that those reconstruction dreams were like those of Calderón de la Barca.

Today it may seem that everything was too easy and, in my opinion, it was very difficult drilling into a thick reality with the fine bit of will, ingenuity and knowledge. Upon listening to him, an interlocutor perceives that, beyond academic teachings, there is the tireless pursuit of a self-taught man who enjoys going farther than the limits of the disciplines.

Maybe, like he called himself, he has been a child of his time, of this time of boldness that the future will judge with the cold logic of the distance; however, that is a privilege not of gods but of men.

I also remember that, upon stepping into a university classroom I found him sitting as a student of History. He needed the degree that is so much requested but his knowledge was far superior to those of a bachelor’s degree.

He searched here for the methods, the systems, the theories that academia discusses and promotes. The young professor enjoyed and learned from the nice dialogue with the wise, degreeless historian.

A Havana denizen, he knew how to love his city and work in the rescue and prevalence of its spiritual and material values; but when observing in general his work in this city, the breadth of his vision can be understood. Museums, libraries, school, homes, college, gave the project a warmth that revived the city, which only had sense as the habitat of our human space.

Remembering now a phrase of José de la Luz y Caballero, stated in 1832 in reference to Bishop Espada, I’d like to say that Eusebio “makes me like the noble pride of having a Havana heart beating in me”. And it is that “Havana’s Havana” is nothing else than the fact that Cuba also beats with the Havana heart and the whole world contributed to the wealth of its streets.

He is loyal to his surnames, Leal (loyal) to his ideas and to his principles and Spengler, that the writer translates whimsically as splendid in his deliverance to Cuba, to his revolution and to the patriotic legacy of all of the builders of this, his ‘BELOVED HOMELAND”, like the golden title of one of his books.

When I walk the streets of our Havana and the streets of many other Cuban cities, I will keep feeling Eusebio’s presence and feeling his charming and firm voice. You do not lave, you stay in the soul of those of us who love, create and believe in those ethical values that you also help sowing.

Eusebio Leal Spengler

Eusebio Leal Spengler: one of the mosr real and useful Cubans of our times

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