It was the early days of 1957. The assassination of the revolutionary William Soler, a teenager barely 15 years old, had Santiago de Cuba in the throes of violence. As a protest, a women's rally began to be organized along Enramadas Street.
By then, the 26th of July Movement was already woven into the veins of the city. Many vital members of the organization were hiding in the home of Vilma Espín Guillois' family, and Frank País expressly forbade her to attend, because of the danger it could pose to everyone.
But she could not contain her anxiety: although she did not doubt the mothers' decision, she feared that, in the face of the soldiers' onslaught, the demonstration would disperse. Wearing a red jacket and carrying her camera, she went out, after assuring Frank that she would only take pictures.
However, when a jeep with Army troops intercepted the people in San Felix, and Vilma saw that it made some impression, she could not keep quiet and shouted, "Let's sing the anthem!"
Everyone did, louder and louder. A corporal stood up to the girl, who was a red light in the middle of the mourning crowd, and she replied. The next day the photo of the argument made the front page.
The event cost her a sharp scolding from Frank; she would never again violate his orders not to act without authorization, not even during the bitter moment of her burial.
DDiscipline defined Vilma, Alicia, Monica, Deborah... but also fearlessness: she was the one who took compromising photos from her wallet without the soldiers about to arrest her noticing; the one who slipped down the walls, and went, like water between their fingers, to the pursuers, thirsty for her blood.
"If they catch her they will cut her up," Raúl wrote in a message. Frank's natural successor, the provincial coordinator of Oriente was among the most wanted in the plains. Always at the edge of torture and death, her comrades saw her as the boss, not only for being a natural leader, but also for a serenity that astonished those who shared the daily terror of the clandestine struggle.
A journalist who wanted to go up to the Sierra, after feeling offended by Deborah's adolescent appearance and her schoolgirl stockings, had to correct himself after being glacially interrogated by her: "That movement that had women who looked so young and at the same time so tough, had to be a very serious movement."
When the time came when Santiago was set up as a death trap, Vilma was left as a delegate of the National Directorate in the 2nd Frank País Front.
It was there that her lifelong love with Raúl was born, and the guerrilla spirit that she already carried and that would never leave her again was consolidated forever.
Because Vilma, the second Cuban woman to graduate in Chemical Engineering, after the triumph and among an endless number of tasks, took on the most difficult battles, those that had to do with scourges deep-rooted in the collective and individual conscience: causes such as the defense of women and their rights, educational processes, the end of discrimination....
Without mincing words, she denounced machismo in the revolutionary ranks, uncovered those who put up false pretenses for her visit, denounced in the middle of the world congress the attempt to approve a report that no one had read. And she took care of every case of a child, woman or elderly person as if it were her own family.
She remained Deborah. She also put all her courage into peace.
