”A woman with hair on her chest”, that is what is usually called to some other female who, due to her characteristics, has shown exceptional value or profound bravery and even, perhaps, ”steel temper”, as it is also described someone that they have probably demonstrated their courageous qualities to face certain situations in life in any way.

With these characteristics I know several women, because life has given me the opportunity to know with so many people, that, of course, I have had to run into on the road as the saying goes with “everything like in a pharmacy.”

I met this native from Bayamo here in our city, where she settled when she was very young, only 16 or 17 years old. I was a girl and she worked as the manager of “El Darling” clothing store, on Republica street, on the corner of San Esteban, where “Agua y Jabón” is today, a place very close to my house at that time. time, where I spent all my childhood, and where my mother, dedicated herself with great mastery to sewing, being her vast clientele, dissimilar women, but fundamentally the employees of the commercial stores, who at that time were uniformed with black clothes in winter and white in summer. And, of course, most of those pieces of clothing were made by her hands.

That is why one day someone showed up there with this slim, elegant, mulatto woman with a markedly eastern accent, and they introduced her to my mother so that she would also be part of the army of shopkeepers who regularly visited my house, and whom my father was terrified of them, especially when they showed up after 4:30 pm, a time when he was coming home after his workday, a time when he didn’t like a full house at all, as he used to say.

That’s how I got used to coming and going in uniform, to hearing their stories too, while they waited for the tailoring after the forced fit, because according to that good seamstress, the clothes had to fit the body like a “glove” for that to be a good seam.

Then it was like one day, that eastern woman, she aroused in me a great curiosity and a special admiration, yes, because she never boasted about her career or her merits, even though she had more than enough.

There on Quinta Street #152 /Ave, Varona y Sexta, in the Puerto Príncipe neighborhood of our city, with her 92 lucid years, lives Gladys Eugenia Castañeda Pompa, that lady I am talking about today, whose life story always captivated me, because she told me that there, in the clandestine struggle, when she was a member of the Rebel Army, she had to drive vehicles to transport medicines to treat the rebels in a field hospital in the Sierra Maestra on more than one occasion and with great satisfaction, she told me that his driver’s license was signed by none other than Army General Raúl Castro.

Member of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution since its foundation, this captain, who was in charge of 48 men, who knew what a prison was before the revolutionary triumph, and was even raped by the renowned henchman Pata de Ganso, and shared the leadership of action and sabotage with Lester Delgado, in our city, she still remembers lived passages and is always willing to dialogue and offer her experiences to these generations who will be able to, in addition to enjoying and admiring her, as I have always done, check that she doesn’t have hair on his chest, but she does have a great heart that she has known how to control, despite so much pain suffered and so many losses experienced.

To her, to Gladys and her beautiful family, created with the great love and sacrifice that she always did, come then all the love, gratitude and satisfaction of this simple and humble woman from Camagüey who, counted and counts on her valuable friendship.

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García