By Marta Cabrales, Latin American Summary, July 25, 2022.
The effects of the gunshots that can be seen on the facade and the yellow perimeter wall of the former Moncada barracks are a reminder of historical memory and to assimilate in a creative way the glorious heritage of the epic of the July 26, 1953.
Through the ravines of the fort, converted into a town-school, one can catch a glimpse of the daily life of this town, which woke up on a Sunday carnival morning, shaken by the misadventures of the young revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro. what one of them had said. I wanted to take the very sky from the storm.
On July 26, 1953, at 5:12 a.m., as the attackers attempted to seize the second military fort in the country as a measure of immense audacity against an army superior in men and arms, they used José Marti as a talisman. ideas, whose centenary year passed in January of the same year.
Although so carefully designed, due to the failure of the surprise factor, the action did not achieve the fundamental objective, which was the seizure of the military complex of Fulgencio Batista’s tyranny, it marked the beginning of the final stage of rebel conflicts. ,
A real bloodbath lived in the city in the days that followed with the murder of several participants, the fierce persecution of any suspects, the imprisonment of the main people involved, and a trial condemning their fearlessness.
This is how fighter Gloria Cuadras described it in the book The Uncovered Face of the Underground: “Those days were horrible, people moved in an extraordinary way, especially those of us who were revolutionaries. “
Supported by her husband, Amaro Iglesias, she made a bold move: “…save the remains of the dead. By all means prevent them from being hidden forever so that no one even puts flowers on the graves of those who died. those who came to our province to give their precious lives to liberate the country…”. But I saw a truck loaded with crude coffins, some covered in blood. Gloria describes the movement in the cemetery of Santa Iphigenia with lifeless bodies, already almost rotten, Dantesque.
There were nine graves where he was buried in an area for the poor and in the register of the necropolis he was called the “unknown dead”. The wooden rectangles kept secret thereafter allowed the identification of the illustrious looters.
In a self-defense petition known as History I Will Be Acquitted, citing José Martí’s verses honoring medical students killed by Spanish colonial rule, the young jurist said: “The crime of November 27 1871 Multiply by ten and you will have before you the heinous and heinous crimes of July 26, 27, 28 and 29, 1953.
Later, he condemned: “Besides, my companions are neither forgotten nor dead; They live longer than ever and their killers must see how the victorious ghost of their thoughts emerges from their heroic corpses.
in an attempt to revive the definitive crusade
After an amnesty received in 1955 due to strong popular pressure, he went into exile in Mexico and, from there, prepared the trip to resume the definitive crusade against the government of the satrap. So, on December 2, 1956, the Granma ferry reached the eastern shores with 82 expedition members and the Freedom package.
The July 26 Movement, which emerged as a political organization to unite the desire for deep and radical change in Cuba, was at the time most responsible for channeling and insurgent forces, the armed wing, the Mexico came from the early core. Soil, it was nurtured by the farmers of the Sierra Maestra mountains and other secret revolutionaries.
Five years, five months and five days after the attack on Moncada, the declaration of victory by the rebels from the founding center of the city marked the beginning of a phase in which, according to Fidel, the undisputed leader of these operations, everything would be much more difficult. .
His first words marked the economic and social changes brought about by the revolution since then, which, like few others in the world, has been subjected to the suffocation of the greatest power in the world, which does not accept the creation of the socialism right under his nose.
Nothing has been easy, really, and 69 years after the act, Cuban revolutionaries have faced a difficult crossroads, a two-year battle against Covid-19 and the United States government, economic, commercial and after. the opportunistic intensification of the financial blockade. In the midst of the global economic crisis triggered by the pandemic.
Constructive resistance was urged by Miguel Diaz-Canel, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, in the complex circumstances of the country, which was a historic mandate to convert failures into victories, a proverb still attached. It was due to the relative failure of Moncada by Fidel.
In the ancestral cemetery of Santa Iphigenia, the Cubans have an altarpiece of belonging and identification with the final appearance of the national hero, José Martí; The Fathers of the Nation, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes and Mariana Grazales, mothers of those who were born in this land and committed to it, as well as many heroes.
Nearby, a memorial to those who fell in the attack on Moncada, which does justice to the promise made to the nation in the Declaration of December 12, 1953, at the Presidio of the Isle of Pines:
“I hope that one day the free fatherland will go to the fields of the untamed East, with the apostles to collect the bones of our comrades, to be gathered in a great tomb, like martyrs who have been of the century and whose epitaph is Marty’s idea”.
Revealing, the sentence that can be read there: “No martyr dies in vain, nor any lost thought that distances him or brings him closer, but the memory of having seen him remains forever. “
Since Sunday, December 4, 2016, from the ashes of the novice lawyer who, together with his allies, tried to overthrow the bastion of Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship in order to promote a dignified life for his compatriots, a new energy continues to stay together appeared to build the future.
Very close to the apostle, and defying the stormy winds that tried to subjugate the rebellious island, the historical leader of the revolution never stopped calling for audacity and love.
Source: Latin press
