Marta Rojas
"THERE is no prow that can cut through a cloudbank of ideas," wrote José Martí in an essay published in the Mexican El Partido Liberal in 1891. And on July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro, then a young lawyer, and his compañeros did not achieve victory in the assault on the Moncada and Bayamo garrisons, but their ideas had to triumph, given that they were based on those of José Martí. Thus, in his trial for the assault, which began on September 21 of that year in the Santiago de Cuba Palace of Justice, the leader of the revolutionary movement proclaimed José Martí the intellectual author of the Moncada assault and reiterated it in his defense plea – known as History Will Absolve Me – on October 16, 1953, in the improvised courtroom in the Saturnino Lora Civil Hospital. With the assault on the dictatorship’s second military fort, José Martí, Cuba’s national hero, was vindicated on the centenary of his birth. In 2013, Cuba will honor the 60th anniversary of his birth and the trial, and has begun to celebrate the 160th anniversary of José Martí‘s birth. But, how did the de facto government, the result of a military coup perpetrated by Fulgencio Batista from the Columbia Fort in the early hours of March 10, 1952, propose to celebrate that centenary? Commemorative events for the Martí’ centenary began with much fanfare, but it was the people who had to pay for the huge or fictitious costs to swell the private accounts of the regime’s representatives. One of the first orders decrees (1952) imposed "Martí taxes" to defray the celebration costs. A tax of one day’s salary was imposed on public employees; professionals were charged a two-peso tax; and a one-centavo contribution was levied on every child in public schools, to be collected in classrooms. Moreover, these were not the only taxes, direct or indirect. In the interest of truth, it should be said that fervent Martí followers visited Cuba that year and patriotic programs were organized at a far remove from the abovementioned fanfare. These made themselves felt, in defiance of threats, by organizations such as the Civic Front of Martí Women, among other brave actions. The January 10 Committee, founded by students at the University of Havana, which took its name from the date in 1929 when Julio Antonio Mella was shot dead in Mexico, proposed extending university autonomy to the area outside the Colina, including the little plaza, location of the bust of Mella, founder of the first Marxist-Leninist Party of Cuba together with Carlos Baliño, as well as the University Students Federation. Members of the committee included students Raúl Castro, Pedro Miret, and Lester Rodríguez, as well as the Mercado Único worker Antonio (Ñico) López, later combatants in Santiago de Cuba and Bayamo on July 26 of that year. In January 1953, Fidel Castro took part in a meeting of the Martí Congress for the Rights of Youth at the University Students Federation office, in which it was agreed to coordinate a march on the afternoon of January 28 to honor the centenary. The evening before, there was a peregrination now known as the March of the Torches, which left from the University stairway and ended at the Martí Forge, where students and the people awaited the birth date of José Martí. With the due discretion in accordance with the Martí maxim, "…to be done in silence for there are things that must be concealed to be attained;" it was not known, until Fidel affirmed it in the Moncada trial, both the mass demonstrations, the torchlight one and the one on the 28th to the Martí statue in Central Park, included 1,200 young people comprising the clandestine revolutionary cells training under his leadership for the future assault on the Moncada Garrison. A fatal incident had already taken place in the wake of the desecration of the bust to Julio Antonio Mella on January 10. In the protest against this act student Rubén Batista was injured by the police and, after three days of fighting for his life, died in the Students Room at the Calixto García Hospital. Rubén Batista became the first martyr in the Martí centenary year. The traditional political opposition pronounced itself against the de facto regime which had removed the constitutional president and abolished the Constitution of the Republic, but these politicians wanted to channel a process in accordance with their power interests and not against the administrative corruption which was undermining the country, or to the benefit of social causes. Obviously, Martí’s tenets were not on their agenda. For them Martí was only an object of propaganda. Some honest leaders – for their part – believed that the conditions were not in place to go any further; in other words, to undertake armed action against the ruling military regime. But Fidel Castro who, through then, was a member of the radical wing of the Orthodoxy Party, with strong popular roots, and many other young people, put Martí’s thinking into practice and acted consistently with his ideas which others praised only in words. "At each moment, what is necessary at each moment must be done." This was the maxim of the national hero, acknowledged by Martí scholar Gonzalo de Quesada y Miranda as decisive. "To put something off is to never decide" (…) "In order to move ahead of the rest, it is necessary to see more than them." (…) "Freedom comes at a price and it is necessary either to resign oneself to living without it, or to decide to buy it at its price." In this context, the maxim of Fidel and his compañeros in the Moncada assault very soon became a reality. Later, from prison on the Isle of Pines, Fidel wrote a pamphlet which was circulated clandestinely, titled Para Cuba que sufre, (For Suffering Cuba), which he asked to be illustrated with a photo of José Martí and another of the hero’s ideas: "Before giving up the undertaking to make the homeland free and prosperous, the sea of the South will unite with the sea of the North." That pamphlet, which preceded History Will Absolve Me, ratified Martí’s thinking and contained an exposé of the crimes committed on July 26, 1953 and the days following it in Oriente province. Taking up Fidel’s response in the trial concerning the events of July 26, his asseveration that the sole intellectual author of Moncada was José Martí, it is enough to mention other ideas of Cuba’s national independence hero to confirm how accurate the words of the accused were. "There is a limit to weeping over the grave of the dead, and it is the infinite love for the homeland and glory which is sworn over their bodies, and which does not fear and is never lost or debilitated; because the bodies of the martyrs are the most beautiful altar of honor."- José Martí. And Fidel ended his defense plea by emphasizing: "It seemed as if the Apóstol [José Martí] was going to die in the year of his centenary, that his memory would be extinguished for ever, so great was the affront! But he lives, he has not died, his people is a rebel people, his people is worthy, his people is faithful to his memory, there are Cubans who have fallen defending his doctrines, there are young people who, in magnificent redress came to die beside his tomb to give him their blood and their lives so that he continues living in the soul of the homeland. Cuba, what would have become of you if your Apóstol had died!" GRANMA
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