Cubans swim across Matanzas Bay "motivated by Fidel."

The Crossing of Matanzas Bay, one of the most important mass sporting events in the city, brought together 74 swimmers this Saturday who reenacted the open water event "motivated by Fidel Castro."

The swimmers set off from the old Port Captaincy to Playa el Tenis and completed a route of 2.5 kilometers that was conquered by Alberto Javier Oliveros Pérez, an engineer from the Telecommunications Company S.A (ETECSA).

The event, organized by the Los Cocodrilos del Tenis Open Water Club and local authorities, reached its 54th edition and brought together swimmers aged between 12 and 82 years old.

According to the state-run station Radio 26, the winner expressed that the test "is a challenge to the human will to overcome, a feeling that the Commander in Chief Fidel instilled in various generations of Cubans, who challenged his time and led a triumphant Revolution in January 1959."

The headline chosen by the official broadcaster is noteworthy: "Fidel motivates swimmers for the crossing of the Bay of Matanzas."

The dictator who remained in power for 47 years and created a totalitarian regime that ended civic and political freedoms on the Island effectively "motivated" the dangerous voyages taken by thousands of Cubans in precarious vessels across the treacherous waters of the Florida Strait, in which countless lives were lost.

But Oliveros Pérez was only 25 years old when the dictator died, and he had not been born when the Mariel exodus occurred.

His job at ETECSA, owned by the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), in the hands of the military dictatorship, requires him to adhere to an old and anachronistic script in which the commander-in-chief is the father of all victories.

Even reduced to ash and encased in a stone weighing 48 tons, the "motivational spirit" of the dictator is capable of inspiring open water swimmers.