This creative swarm, with a mission bent on giving us back our childhood illusions and that candid contemplation of the entire universe –so useful when it comes to transforming those seemingly unreachable goals- has been felt in our hearts as if it were a project spearheaded by the City’s Historian Offi ce itself.

There were times when La Colmenita was just a newsmaker and a supreme rejoice following their inevitable presentations in our squares, museums, children’s centers, theaters, schools… in the pages of the Opus Havana magazine, on the airwaves of Havana Radio’s Th e Cultural Program… all the way to becoming a nationwide artwork that settled down in the historic core of Old Havana.

To its director, a man of Marti-driven thoughts whose mission has been one of love and creation, of thinking and acting for the sake of our dearest treasures –boys and girls- goes my most sincere admiration. In several public appearances I’ve referred to his dedication as the kind you fi nd in men like Jose de la Luz y Caballero, thefounding father of Cuban pedagogy.

He’s been a good and generous teacher who’s given his body and soul to the kids. Th ey, in return, have indulged themselves into the supreme love Cremata indoctrinates in them: the love for the homeland, for all the children in the world, for peace, for the chance to heal the pain with a smile, with blissfulness and with the heart on the palm of their hands.

When the need to fi nd a new space of creation brooked no further delay, we never hesitated to off er them one of the oldest and loveliest locations in Old Havana: the third building of the St. Francis of Assisi Convent that took a great deal of resources for its remodeling and unlimited imagination in the use of those resources applied to the design.

Luckily, as we step into the theater chamber we travel to the unfathomable realm of childish imagination and we rejoice watching the bumblebees and the sublime characters that have been with us since we were kids, from the fl irty Little Roach Martina to the graceful Cinderella.

But the most moving thing of all, what really touches our hearts before so monumental a work, is the familiar and fl uent dialogue that takes place among parents, artists and children. Th ere are moments when we notice mental or physical impairments in some of the kids. However, in a couple of shakes, those handicaps fade away during the presentation and their diff erences complement one another because their skills and potentials now wear their hearts out on their sleeves in an act of sublime fraternity among the members of that immense humanity called La Colmenita.

Cremata and his group are now counted by the thousands all across the country. Th ey have taken their art to the farthest corners of Cuba and the world. Everybody gets amazed by the image of a feasible brighter future for this planet, an image these kids spread with their honey of peace and concord.

There are two ways of seeing and dreaming of the world. Right at the entrance of the Third Order Theater that Cremata and his group now call home, there was this lady that a few days ago warned us about the real beehive that now dangles from the portico, just like a wise whim of nature. “Bees sting,” she told us in awe, but another woman who was passing by at the moment, said full of emotion: “How lovely! Th ey learned La Colmenita is here and now they have built their hive right at the gate.”