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The Earth Needs Its Own Moncada
Life is so wonderful and
surprising that no pen or brush can touch it… it is as if she
mocks us all. For Celia Hart, this July 26th has been the most
beautiful of her life and she explains why.
By Celia Hart
A CubaNews translation by Odilia Galván Rodríguez.
Edited by Walter Lippmann. March 4, 2009
I’ve
lived with the envy of not having participated in that July 26,
of 1953. The eternal envy of not even being able to imagine how
beautiful Melba Hernandez and Haydee Santamaria looked on that
July 25 in the wee hours of the next morning.
Haydee, for example, was
alongside the men she loved: her brother, who was her life; and
her boyfriend, the handsome Luis Boris, and of course Fidel… who
became the leader without so much as an election, or without a
doubt, and in the company of a large number of Cuba’s best men.
But even with as much as Haydée
shared with me from her own lips, I've never been able to get
close to her feeling of indescribable joy at knowing that they
intended to take heaven by assault, and knowing she was doing so
in the company of the people she loved.
At the Granjita [small farm]
Siboney, Boris and Haydee probably shared the most beautiful
phrases that a couple in love could ever get to say… be united
by passion and commitment: united in these things, and hours
before wanting to save the homeland, just because José Martí
wanted it that way… it’s an erotic experience that can not be
imagined, nor would the best trade magazines be able to
illustrate it in the best colors. The market still fails to
comprehend those love stories, where the altar is not before
God, but a duty to fulfill beyond themselves, beyond loving each
other for richer or poorer, where the commitment is for the
happiness of mankind, this is probably the oath of love those
two made that night in July.
And I think that many of us die
before ever feeling anything similar. Those are things I always
envy about my mother. To love and be loved in those moments
leading up to July 26… even if they were only with words,
according to her own testimony.
After being born, on all July
26s, I was always very happy, because I knew Fidel would be
there. I would be able to see him and listen to him, even if it
was only on television, it was one of those moments of supreme
happiness. To hear how he would begin in a low tone, then raise
his voice and he would continue to speak on the same subject
painting sunshine into each verb. Fidel is one those teachers
who speaks with his hands, with his beard, with his cap. Then
all my 26s, although at the same time deeply envying my mother
and Melba, were filled with light because I knew that when six
p.m. came an entire people would be listening to the best
speaker in the world, who also happened to be… my President.
And that's why last year, on July
26 in Camaguey, I did not turn the TV on.
It had just been a year since
that last July 26 was commemorated, when I would see Fidel
dressed as a guerrillero for the last time. A few days
later he became ill and we all know the rest of the story. I did
not turn the TV on – I did not want to know about the 26th. A
July 26 without Fidel Castro did not exist for me. I did not
hear Raul’s startling speech first-hand, (which I read a
thousand times after that). It was my saddest 26th, for the
first time the master teachers of all teachers would not speak,
would not be present. Not even the notes of the anthem of the
26th sounded the same, it seemed as though Cartaya’s notes, a
Moncada combatant, were colder and dubious.
But life is so wonderful and
surprising that no pen or brush can touch it... it is as if she
mocks us all: This July 26 was the most beautiful of my life,
even knowing that I would not see Fidel, and I will tell you
why:
A group of young men from the
University decided to celebrate the 55th Anniversary of July 26
at Pico Turquino (the mountainous elevation of the Sierra
Maestra)… and they honored me with an invitation. In reality I
am twice their age and three times their weight, but above all I
have reservations about sightseeing the weapons of the struggle.
Yes, because the eastern
mountains are there, faithful to the Cuban revolution! They are
at the ready, in case its external enemy was to lose its memory
and try to go up against it, or even if someone from inside were
to think to endanger it. The Sierra Maestra is not a monument;
it remains a weapon of struggle.
Because this summer, when so many
strange things have happened in the world, where so many things
have been said, things that we still fail to grasp; I willingly
accepted the invitation. They said, "Celia, usted [the formal
address of the word you] are the only “little old lady” we
invited". I took in two breaths at that “old lady” comment and
the formal way in which they addressed me, but I changed into my
20 year old self, while swallowing my pride and replied, “It is
true, I am a little old lady”, but at least on the road, I will
threaten you if you don’t address me less formally.
We started planning everything
but as it always happens, the ideas surpass reality – July 26
bracelets, plasticized posters of our Five heroes, planned
interviews with combatants and a thousand, thousand other
things.
However, at that time, because of
practical problems, which are not worth outlining, it was not
possible to make the trip.
Having become prisoners
of anguish at seeing the failed project, what came to our
spiritual rescue was Fidel’s maximum, “convert setbacks into
victories”. To be honest, I do not know if it was Fidel who said
that but it is he who has and will, in practice, always be the
one who has achieved it best.
Thus was born, from the warmest
heavens of August, the idea of establishing a column under the
name of Abel Santamaria, and that we would go to the Turquino,
amending our many mistakes, on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban
revolution.
Five hours of talks in the
Bodegón Teodoro, a small pub which miraculously in this Havana,
which is somewhat touristy, we could eat paying in the already
known "National currency", only a few steps from the staircase
of the university – the most revolutionary steps in world
history.
And the eve of July 26 came
again.
Here in Havana there is just one
place worth commemorating it [July 26th] – at 25th and O Street
in the populous Vedado neighborhood. In that small apartment
where they dreamed for the first time, that José Martí was right
and that Julio Antonio Mella did not proclaim before he died, "I
die for the revolution", because he was foolish… that Antonio
Guiteras was not a coincidence, and his death much less. There
in that small apartment where the sky came to be reunited with
the land and to rearm the world together, is exactly where one
needs to be if you do not have the good fortune of being in the
beloved Santiago de Cuba.
Midnight sounded and the
excitement transported us. The small park was filling with
people who came from everywhere and there, among the celebrants,
the musicians and the joy, I tried for a moment to transport
myself to that July 25 of that unforgettable 1953. By leaving
the Abel Santamaria column established… and that it was a
beautiful green-eyed young man, as was my uncle Abel, who
drafted the proclamation. I felt a happiness that did not fit
inside me and I think that I even came to sweat that… happiness.
Of course we must submit the plan for consideration to the
relevant organizations but all those Cuban organizations will
agree, because we are in pure resonance.
The objectives of the column
became clear in that proclamation by the young student.
Number Zero was to support and
give their lives for this socialist revolution whatever the
circumstances.
Number One was to educate youth
with ideas of those youths who had belonged to the apostle of a
hundred years before.
Number Two was to achieve, with
simple activities, that the following be accomplished. Namely:
Republish Abel Santamaria’s
newspaper (this time in digital format) called, "They Are The
Same"… “With the glorious peculiarity, that corrupt governments
and imperialism are the same… except in Cuba, where ‘we are
others’ thanks to their shed blood. But the happiness of Cuba
was not enough to make the earth rotate in peace.”
And the Earth will need its own
Moncada.
Number three; rely on the
wonderful project of almost all "Minerva" bookstores in the
country, that serve as a library, and to call our library "Red
Minerva", where we would make book loans and do interactive
readings… all the red books of any latitude and of all time. Not
only because we were just below that mythical flat of 25th and
O; nor because we were just a few meters away from where the
poet Luis Cernuda had lived… even when Abel and Haydee
Santamaria moved into that place; not only for all that history
embroidered in the gold threads of those years. In those months,
even though history, always demanding and cautious, will not say
so… Cernuda and the future Moncadistas must have met and talked
in that popular cafeteria by the name of Lidia – that separates
the two buildings… Today it is one of those globalized Paris
café’s that does not remember any such talks between the failed
Spanish republic and the revolution, which had recently begun in
the soul of those young people… and we and the Spanish should do
something to rescue that place.
But not even that – not Abel, not
Yeye, not Cernuda, nor the popular cafeteria… this July 25 was
in the hands of the humble people of Cayo Hueso… the
neighborhood adjacent to this blessed corner which was
highlighted by University youths retelling the history and
making us relive it.
The carnivals were in progress at
the well-known Malecon of Havana Bay … but not even that could
overshadow our party. Well, for the Moncadistas, the Carnival
was the best excuse… Many said, "Oh, the members of the army
were shooting at each other". In the heart of every real
Santiaguero [people from Santiago de Cuba] beat a wish for more
than an internal free-for-all to dazzle the carnivals of the
most dazzling city in the world.
In our 25th not that of 1953, but
of 2008, 55 years after those carnivals, all would come to 25th
and O as if they knew something was happening.
And that was the case with the
aspiration to establish the Abel Santamaria column. The youth,
(a group of them), were again prepared to give their lives for
the same project that enlarged life and the youth of 1953
laughed at death in Santiago de Cuba.
The Centennial [of the Apostle]
bookstore, the best of the city, without doubt! The
neighborhood, the buildings and the night after the rain
cleared, was a good omen for the Abel Santamaria column which
would become a project of the Young Communists League, of the
University Students Federation of the Battle of Ideas of Fidel…
the same Fidel of always. Among the sponsors, the Association
with the Combatants of the Revolution, the Martían Club of the
Insurrection on the Plain, that and many more. Our beloved
Froilán González, who "by chance" happened to be there and
supported the column… And if Froilán was there, Adys Cupull, was
also there… as one does not exist without the other.
People from the Solidarity
Committee for the Cuban Five, imprisoned in the United States,
were also there and offered their support.
Something very strange happened:
The custodians, interrupted the heated speeches and shouted "Why
not more students?" "The workers can not belong to the column?"…
And a lady jumped: what a lady: a compañera!... who had for
years declaimed like as a goddess (I do not know if the gods
declaim,) "And how about the elderly, they aren’t included
either? You all are some sectarian youth!
My mother touched my skin...
there, where she likes to stand in front of me to tell me to
breathe, to feel, and to understand the happiness… and I ended
up listening to her and I envied her a little less for not
having been with them that 25th – of which she herself says,
“they were the happiest times I lived.”
"Fortunately they exist"
I reflected on which of Silvio
Rodriguez’s songs I like most… it is difficult to choose, but
this is the one I like most: "Everyone has their own Moncada". I
always found the title a bit bureaucratic for a song with such
beautiful lyrics, which alerts us mortals that "fortunately they
exist" the immortals… because they are capable of dieing for
what they believe in.
Yes, it is good that these youths
exist, who remember my uncle Abel… Fortunately, the Centennial
bookstore exists... Fortunately, five Cuban men exist, who were
imprisoned by the impotence of an enemy as old and as well known
as capitalism.
My Five comrades, those who must
return beyond the maze of U.S. law, those who build their
Moncada in a new way every day.
Roberto Gonzalez, lawyer and
brother of our invincible Rene, said something that should be
ringing in our ears… if we still have them, "They will be
released when they are more dangerous inside [the U.S.] than
out"… As with Fidel, while imprisoned on the Island of Pines. It
was better to have him outside than inside… and that was not
pity. The enemy never has pity.
Between all of us we will make it
impossible for them to continue to be imprisoned… because they
are our Moncada! And without them there will be no "possible
reforms, (I detest that word), in Cuba"
We are at war. If we were not at
war there would not be five Cubans imprisoned under the childish
label of terrorist, (another word I detest).
Maybe that Ingrid Betancourt can
tell us how we can hire the fake Red Cross to mount a rescue of
them, because they have been abducted!
But of these Cubans we will speak
of later. In September many events have their anniversary,
including the admitted and allowed kidnapping, of these five men
ten years ago. While the true murderers continue walking around
free and living their lives.
That is why is my revolution is
permanent.
Was the Moncada barracks
assaulted by Communists?
Among Marxists and Marxologists
(to give them a name) there is a large gap: Something like the
difference between a physicists who theoretically knows what a
nuclear fission chain reaction is and those that produce a bomb
capable of killing millions of human beings.
Despite those distances (which
are not that big), those who gave their lives, and those of
their children in order to change the history of Cuba were not
communistologists… They were communists, although they had never
read the manifesto of those bearded men of the nineteenth
century, or of the bald-headed man of the October Revolution.
They were the real Communists of Cuba, who followed those paths
to understanding, who shouldered, and projected the reality in
which they lived.
They had nothing to lose, and the
little they had they sold to buy arms and to raze a society
where man exploits man. And no one say anything to me! At least
not without having read what Haydée, who fortunately for me was
my mother, wrote to my Spanish grandparents, who lived in Cuba.
In that letter, written more with
tears than with ink, my mother, who lost her brother, her
boyfriend, and almost everything she loved, informed my
grandparents about the good news first and then the not so good,
"The Constancia Sugar Central will now belong to the workers and
not to the owners… and Abel will be more alive than ever."
I have read some Marx, Lenin,
Trotsky, Rosa, Gramsci. Lukács, Mariategui, and Che and finally
all those who I can find… but do not stop being a vulgar
aspiring communist or will die as an aspiring communistologist…
something that I ask God not to permit, trying to reach with the
useless point of my pen, that which they did… they, the real
Marxists, who did not need many books to know that the earth was
faltering and that their lives were necessary.
And for that red and black flag!
Ah, that flag which will become the flag of Latin America! Of
the Sandinistas, of the Farabundo Marti of El Salvador, and of
my Colombia… and that of Colombia, before which I kneel, and I
can give my life for; that of the FARC-EP and the ELN, they have
these same colors.
The red and black flag is the
flag of revolution in the Americas and by "rare" coincidence was
the colors of July 26 movement. A coincidence?
Almost no person who took part in
the assault on the Moncada barracks died in combat. For all
intents they were tortured in an orgy of blood… because that is
the only recourse of the enemy… to murder. Not us, they are the
ones who torture, murder and even approve it into law while
wearing powdered wigs, as did the U.S. government! They are the
terrorists; they are the same, like the title of Abel
Santamaria’s newspaper who had ten issues. Being the same, we
need to act so that there is increasingly less confusion and
divisions on the left in this world.
They were and are communists
assailants at Moncada. They were because they awoke the spirit
of equality, detachment, commitment and altruism… At that time
we lacked the one who joined us afterwards! Che should have been
a Moncadista… and as such they gave him Cuban citizenship “from
birth” and we should, beyond the statues and flowers, give him
the status of Moncadista. In Mexico, Fidel had said but a few
words in order for him to join the most Bolshevik project of the
world at that moment.
Of them, and of those who took on
the project, this revolution was born.
And fortunately they exist...
Because Gerardo, Fernando, Ramon, Antonio and Rene are
Moncadistas… only that our irons need to be more powerful than
those of Batista, because the current Batistianos are more
arrogant; they are more afraid of values than bullets And that
is why they humiliate them… because the Five are our modern
Moncadistas.
So "fortunately they exist."
And they, the Five (if they say
so or not) are the best contemporary Communists.
The best Cuban tour… can be had
for 10 cents in local currency, so are the secrets of God. Visit
the beautiful city of Regla, see the Church of the owner of the
sea and above all visit the site where, because of the
randomness of destiny, a communist mayor planted an olive tree
in tribute to Lenin – which is the best! It was the first
monument dedicated to the leader of the proletariat, outside his
country! It's the best tour in Havana.
He planted it in nineteen
twenty-four, here on this island, long before the assault on
Moncada.
There, next to Lenin we display
the flag of July 26th, which has that same red as the flag of
the assault on the Winter Palace in 1917.
Haydee would say, "Today we are
Marxists, and we have not ceased being Martísts". But strictly
speaking we are Martíists because we are Marxists and of
course... vice versa.
Final reflection.
"God does not play dice," said
Albert Einstein once (because at the time he did not accept
first hand, the Principle of Uncertainty, one of the pillars of
Quantum Mechanics). But actually God does not play dice, and
probability, which is necessary to understand the functioning of
micro world, which so bothered the great humanist Einstein, was
not playing dice. Probability is not synonymous with free will.
Why Cuba? Why José Martí and
Fidel Castro? Why Che Guevara?
The assault on the Moncada
barracks was consistent with the history of Cuba. In Cuba, where
Jesus Christ was evoked by the Mother of all Cubans, Mariana
Grajales to demand insurrection for her children in favor of the
homeland.
They say that Mariana took the
crucifix and told them, "I swear by him, the first liberal of
history".
And although things look
disconnected… they are not. The ideas of communism in Europe
made stopovers in this part of the world. To save this history
is to save the history of communism. And fighting for a
socialist revolution means at the same time to defend the
history of Cuba. This fascinating paradox is the mystery of this
small piece of land...
Blessed then, now more than ever,
be the red and black flag… today when they want to strip it with
dyes of postmodern liberalism.
And how fortunate it is that they
exist, the Moncadistas, the youth who seek to establish the Abel
Santamaria column, the red and black flag.
And how fortunate it is that they
exist, all those who on the American continent defend those two
colors… Because they too are living their Moncada.
Ever Onward to Victory!
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