Ariel Valdés Pinto, a Cuban farmer from Mayajigua, Sancti Spíritus, works between 15 and 17 hours a day at the guarapo stand he travels to various markets in Tacoronte, Tenerife (Canary Islands), and when he finishes, around three in the afternoon, he takes care of his sugarcane fields, his avocados, and his ají cachucha on a farm he shares on this Spanish island.
Valdés Pinto cannot imagine his business in Cuba because he recognizes that there are obstacles everywhere. He has found in Tenerife what he likes and what he has had all his life: sugarcane. "Ever since I was born, I was born among the sugarcane fields," he tells CiberCuba.
In an interview granted to this portal, Ariel Valdés confesses that he has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. He realized it a few years ago while frying chicharrones and experienced numbness in his cheeks. After undergoing a CT scan, the doctors confirmed that he has a lesion the size of a pea, which is not growing, so they believe he may have had it from birth.
"I have him as a workmate. If you think about that, you get stuck (bad) in a corner and you don't move forward," commented Valdés Pinto, in statements to this portal.
In addition, in the interview, he mentions that he has no greater ambition than to continue cultivating various varieties of sugar cane, including Cinta and Media Luna, and traveling through the markets of Tacoronte with his guarapo stand because he enjoys what he does, and with that, he feeds his family and makes many Latinos in Tenerife happy, for whom his guarapo reminds them of their land and origins.
That's why, he says, in his place those who can pay and those who cannot can drink guarapo. "I do not charge a pregnant woman or a lady in a wheelchair," he comments with humility.
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