Image: Ecuador Noticias.

By Pedro Martínez Pirez

I confess that I am still saddened by the death in Madrid of Pablo Milanés, whom I remember especially that cold morning in Quito on the second day of the Festival Todas las Voces Todas in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Capilla del Hombre, the masterpiece of the painter Oswaldo Guayasamín.

It was Pablito who closed that edition of the Festival in the large General Rumiñahui stadium in Quito, with his emblematic songs De qué callada manera, Si ella me faltara alguna vez, El tiempo, el implacable, Yolanda, Años and El breve espacio en que no estás.

In the 2012 edition of the Festival, Pablito was joined by the American Yoan Baez, the Chilean group Inti Illimani, the Argentinians Piero and Leon Guieco, and the Ecuadorians Margarita Lasso and the orchestra Pueblo Nuevo, who interpreted the emblematic song dedicated to Commander Ernesto Che Guevara by Cuban singer-songwriter Carlos Puebla, who on September 7, 1961 posed for the painter Oswaldo Guayasamín, in his house in Quito, at the time when I was a young Cuban diplomat.

I will never forget that moment when I became an amateur photographer of that event.

On the nights of November 29 and 30, 2012, I was with the Guayasamin family at the Festival, which was attended by the then president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa Delgado, as well as the dear friend Abel Prieto, current president of Casa de las Americas.

It was precisely Abel who invited me to join him on that cold morning to greet Pablo Milanés at the end of the concert.

Todas la Voces Todas... in the embrace of Abel and Pablo of which I was an exceptional witness, I perceived the indestructible unity of the most genuine actors of Cuban culture.

Havana, November 22, 2022.