2023-07-26 06:38:05
The Cuban nation comes from milestones such as October 10, 1868 and February 24, 1895, inherited by the acts and the fighting spirit that freed Cuba from continuing to be a neocolonial republic run by US imperialism since 1898. On this path, where emancipatory insubordination was the constant that should not cease, the events of July 26, 1953 marked the Day of National Rebellion.
The slogan “It’s always 26” should not be associated solely or primarily with festivities. Even less with an emotion empty of the marrow forged by the events that the revolutionary vanguard carried out that assumed itself as the generation of the centenary of Martí. Its members honored the legacy of the preparations and the outbreak of 1868, reaffirmed by José Martí in 1895 for his time and for the future.
That vanguard found its guide in the founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, not as a verbal declaration, but to unleash the liberation of the homeland with actions and fulfill the missions that he set for himself with his revolutionary project, and that his death in combat on May 1895, and the American intervention in 1898 —which he wanted to prevent in time— frustrated for decades. They can be summed up in achieving independence, giving the country a different path from the one imposed by foreign domination —first the Spanish and then the American— and cleaning it up with a deep ethical seeding.
Achieving those purposes would affirm the foundations for social justice.
History will absolve me embodied the goals of the new revolutionary project. Along with their anti-imperialist significance, those aspirations included the moral sanitation of society and identification with those whom Martí called “the poor of the earth”: of the land, not just his own. It was not possible to turn the aspiration of a republic “with everyone, and for the good of all”, into a cloudy ideal alien to whom he expressed it.
Betraying its spirit, that maxim would be cynically repeated —in addition to the uninformed or opportunists of any time, including today— those who supported the neocolonial state. A case in point would be Ramón Grau Sanmartín, who in 1934 created the political organization that usurped the name of the one constituted by Martí: Cuban Revolutionary Party, and added the Authentic label to it, to simulate the legitimacy that his party lacked.
Although he aspired to a republic for the good of all, Martí was aware that everyone’s efforts could not be counted on. Precisely in his speech of November 26, 1891, which has been entitled “With everyone, and for the good of all”, a motto that informs and distinguishes him, the chimera of a revolution that could be done with everyone does not emerge: the I reject those who for selfish interests excluded themselves from that totality.
The revolution of 1895 should not do without the contributions of those who, being rich, contributed to the funds of the war, and in some cases even joined it. But the independence movement was already far from the plans of the richest: it was embraced and defended, mainly, by the humblest sectors.
Oblivious to hypocrisy and opportunism, Martí praised in different ways the support that all people gave to the independence cause; but he especially valued that of the most disadvantaged.
In the same speech cited, he held before an audience that was characterized by the presence or proximity of workers: “This is the worker mob, the ark of our alliance, the baldric, embroidered by the hand of a woman, where the sword has been kept! of Cuba, the redemptive sandbank where one builds, and forgives, and anticipates and loves!”
In general, Marti’s heritage can be seen in the July 26 program that Fidel Castro, his leader, focused on History will absolve me. Although he did not have the reason to dynamit the greatest possible national unity, but pay for it based on the revolutionary work, in that plea he included a definition of the people that from the outset is Martian. Against the representatives of the tyranny that served the powerful and sought to condemn him, he clearly expressed what he called — “we”, he says with the programmatic plural — “people if it is about struggle”.
After mentioning “the six hundred thousand Cubans who are out of work wanting to earn their bread honestly without having to emigrate from their homeland in search of sustenance,” he continued with other examples, from the humble workers in the countryside and the city, “the thirty thousand teachers and professors who are so self-sacrificing, self-sacrificing and necessary for the better destiny of future generations”, “the twenty thousand small merchants overwhelmed with debt”, even “the ten thousand young professionals: doctors, engineers, lawyers, veterinarians, educators, dentists, pharmacists , journalists, painters, sculptors” and others “who come out of the classroom with their titles eager to fight and full of hope to find themselves in a blind alley”.
Having sketched that picture, which today makes it possible to meditate on profound changes and also on the stubborn persistence of reality, and to seek ways to overcome it —but in which the rich or millionaires who lived off the hardships of the popular masses did not fit— , the revolutionary fighter put on trial exclaimed in terms reminiscent of Martí, defender of the humble mob: “That is the people, whose paths of anguish are paved with deceit and false promises! […]!”, and to whom, therefore, “we were not going to say: ‘We are going to give you’, but: ‘Here you are, now fight with all your might so that freedom and happiness are yours!’”.
Such would be the compass of the Cuban Revolution, and the Commander himself ratified it on the eve of the mercenary invasion of April 1961. Also then the homeland needed the greatest possible unity of those who were willing to defend it, but the Leader did not hesitate to proclaim : “Comrade workers and peasants, this is the socialist and democratic Revolution of the humble, with the humble and for the humble. And for this Revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble, we are willing to give our lives”.
To maintain that compass and make it compatible with the rights of all the people, it is also necessary to comply with another of the implicit or explicit mandates in the Martí project and persistently embraced by the Commander: the moral sanitation of the nation. Following the triumph of 1959, the guide himself warned that from then on everything would be more difficult, not easier, and history —life— would prove him right. In his speech on November 17, 2005, which deserves daily attention, he stated, referring to a reality bristling with enemies, pitfalls, and dangers: “This country can destroy itself; This Revolution can be destroyed, the ones who cannot destroy it today are them; we do, we can destroy it, and it would be our fault.”
He supported it despite the fact that he knew better than anyone the damage caused by the imperialist blockade. His arsenal of knowledge included concerning evils that are often shod by such damage, but have vernacular footholds as well. Without exhausting the possible list of them, it is worth mentioning administrative inefficiency, unproductiveness and bureaucratism —which are intertwined with shortages and inflation and aggravate, to the point of unbearable, the daily life of the people—, and the most lethal of all: corruption . Objectively or voluntarily, this scourge is an ally of all the others, and a factual accomplice of the imperialist efforts to destroy the country. To such a reality, two speeches come to mind: one, from José Martí revived on July 26, 1953; another, of Fidel Castro who prepared and directed the events of that date, and those that would give them continuity. In 1894, precisely on the February 24 prior to the one on which he would relaunch the heroic acts of 1868 in 1895, Martí honored his fellow thinker and fighter Fermín Valdés Domínguez, and expressed: “The stages of the towns are not counted by their times of fruitless submission, but by his moments of rebellion”.
For his part, when paying tribute to the feat of 1953 on its twentieth anniversary, the Commander recalled the “Civil Lyrical Message” of the poet from Martí and communist Rubén Martínez Villena. Before saying: “From here we tell you, Rubén: July 26 was the load you requested”, he quoted these verses:
It takes a charge to kill rascals,
to finish the work of revolutions,
to avenge the outraged dead,
to clean the tenacious scab of colonialism,
so as not to make useless, in humiliating luck,
effort and hunger, and wound and death;
so that the Republic can maintain itself,
to fulfill Martí’s marble dream;
so that our children do not beg on their knees,
the homeland that parents won on their feet…
Today the genocidal blockade has been reinforced to extreme, suffocating points, and the internal reality of the country has become more complex with measures whose consequences are yet to be fully seen, which does not allow us to sit down calmly to see how far they go. The value of the call to fight of both founders is green as it was done right now, and does not admit delays.
The Cuban people have history and collective, revolutionary resources, including the Constitution, to face the Revolution itself and with it¸ without anyone or anything confusing it —not even with supposedly ultra-revolutionary proclamations— no matter how severe the outrages may be, evils that, if not eradicated, can end up being deadly for the nation. And it is no longer even a question of starting them on time, but perhaps, at this point, with degrees of delay.
If at other times it was worth calling for action without haste but without pause, now is the time to undertake it without pause and haste, with urgency and wisdom. Only in this way will the deserved homage be paid to those who, throughout more than a century, have given their blood and sweat for the good of the country and its people, and it will always be possible to continue being 26.
Cover photo: Roberto Chile.
#remains