Cuba: To Die for the Homeland is to Live

By Leidys María Labrador Herrera on January 27, 2024

On the eve of the 171th birthday of Jose Marti

Martí is one of those beings whose early death prevents us from evoking him without the question of “how much more could he have done?” However, we choose to remember him without pessimism or regrets, because he lived so intensely, so nobly and so justly, that it is enough for him to be eternal.

The patriotic, political, revolutionary and human maturity of the Apostle came, fortunately for us, very early; that allowed him to build in 42 years an essential legacy, not only to understand the historical evolution of Cuban independence thinking, but also for the definition and understanding of the principles that a society needs to be fair, and the values that cannot be lacking in those who intend to build it.

This is an indisputable merit of Marti’s life and work, developed in perfect coherence, to reach the highest degree of what we wisely identify as an example. To the paradigms we return again and again in search of answers, of safe paths to walk, of truths that are not easily found elsewhere.

Martí has always walked with us, timely and accurate, he has been the protagonist, from his immaterial survival, of the growth of the Revolution, just as he once did with his Necessary War.

We know the answer: in spite of time, of the differences of epochs and contexts, of the variations of objective reality, both programs coincide in the fact that full social justice is only achieved when the benefits of the edified work reach everyone, embrace equally every son of the Homeland.

Therefore, when we ask ourselves what Martí would have said, how he would have acted in a given situation, what interpretation he would have made of our reality, we do not do so because of an inability to discern or make decisions, nor because of nostalgia for an opportunity we did not have to listen to him, to see him, to share with him the time he lived, but because we recognize him as timeless, visionary and foresighted, just as we consider the most faithful of his disciples, Fidel.

Martí is a luck, a talisman, a voice that defies the passing of the years, a legacy that refuses inertia, the staticity of the past, because it fits exactly in each present, as if his pen never stopped writing, as if his prodigious mind never stopped giving birth to noble and exceptional ideas, pregnant with the sacrifice always ready to happen when needed.

In those truths lies the definitive answer to the question “how much more would he have done?”, if that May 19 had not happened. He did much, even more than he ever dreamed of having done, much more than he set out to do, more than he set as a goal for his existence, more than the scope of his dreams.

And he did it for an unquestionable reason, one that we sing with pride and embrace with certainty: to die for the Homeland is to live.

Source: Granma, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English

When Martí became immortal
Dos Ríos reminds us that, yes, there is life after death, as the place where the greatest man of his era fell, but continues to ride with us into every battle we face

Author: Mailenys Oliva Ferrales | informacion@granmai.cu
may 19, 2022 10:05:26

Photo: Roberto Fabelo
The story goes that on that fateful day, May 19, 1895, Martí held no other objective than that of independence, expressing the beautiful premonition of his sacrifice for Cuba, written with great lyricism, writing: “My verse will grow under the grass and I will also grow.”
That day he was unusually dressed as a civilian, with a dark jacket, bow tie and white pants. On his chest – as a badge of Mambí decorum – he wore the rosette of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, and shield his heart, a portrait of María Mantilla, “the beloved girl.”
Sitting solemnly on his horse, Baconao, he inspired respect and admiration, setting out with his head uncovered and his eyes radiating light. Martí was on his way to meet immortality.
“As he passed between a dry bush and a flowering shrub, the shots of the ambushers hit the Maestro’s body; the light from above bathed him, he released the steed’s bridles, and his slack body fell to lie on the beloved Cuban soil,” wrote historian Rolando Rodríguez, narrating the fateful moment.
The orphaned revolution lost its intellectual guide. That night there was no need to declare silence among the Mambisa troops. “The homeland-in-arms was in mourning.”
With bitter pain, Máximo Gómez would record in his diary: “We are left without the best of our comrades, and the soul, we could say, of the insurrection.”
Nonetheless, 127 years later, Dos Ríos reminds us that there is life after death, as the place where the greatest man of his era fell, but continues to ride with us, into every battle we face

Martí, a constant presence lighting the way
Raúl and Díaz-Canel commemorate 124th anniversary of José Martí’s death in battle, sending floral wreaths to his mausoleum in Santa Ifigenia Cemetery

Author: Eduardo Palomares Calderón | palomares@granma.cu
may 20, 2019 08:05:11

Photo: Juvenal Balán
Santiago de Cuba.–As an expression of the constant presence of Cuba’s national hero, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, first secretary of the Party Central Committee, and President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez commemorated the 124th anniversary of José Martí’s death in battle, sending floral wreaths to his mausoleum.
These were placed beside the tomb covered with a Cuban flag, in Santiago de Cuba’s Santa Ifigenia Cemetery, May 19, alongside others from the Council of Ministers and the people of Cuba.
The honor guard participating in the special ceremony for the occasion was composed of cadets from the city’s Camilo Cienfuegos Military Academy.
The central remarks during the event were delivered by Odesa Fuentes Medina, vice president of the Provincial Assembly of People’s Power, who said that Martí’s ideas are more necessary than ever, given the complex international context Cuba faces, with increasing hostility from the United States and the reactivation of the Helms-Burton Act’s Title III.
Martí wrote to his good friend Manuel Mercado, May 18, 1895, “I am now, every day, in danger of giving my life for my country, and it is my duty to prevent, through the independence of Cuba, the U.S. from spreading over the West Indies and falling with added weight upon other lands of Our America. All I have done thus far and shall do hereafter is toward this end…. I know the monster, because I have lived in its lair.”