Anyone entering the Mausoleum that holds the remains of National Hero José Martí Pérez for the first time in the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in Santiago de Cuba will feel a profound sense of respect, grandeur, and commitment that stirs within them, for from there, the Maestro continues to call for unity and struggle.
A few meters away, in the heart of a rustic stone, true to Martí's principle that all the glory of the world fits in a grain of corn, the ashes of his greatest disciple, Fidel Castro Ruz, who transformed his ideas into reality, join their light to Martí's anti-imperialist beacon to illuminate the new world that is possible.
Martí died 131 years ago, on May 19, 1895, and Fidel on November 25, 2016, 121 years later. But history united them from the moment the young revolutionary leader, along with a group of brave men, spearheaded the attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953, ensuring that the Apostle would not die in the centennial year of his birth.
To speak of Fidel without necessarily referencing the Martíian thought that inspired his actions from the beginning of his struggles is as difficult as speaking of Martí without acknowledging that his timely warning about “the disdain of the formidable neighbor, who does not know it, is the greatest danger to our America, against which we must march in close formation, like silver in the roots of the Andes,” a warning that gained strength in our region and the world through Fidel's example, work, thought, and leadership.
Much will have to be written and said about the parallels between these two giants of Cuban, Latin American, and world history. Martí charted the course, and Fidel continued his journey, transforming it into a living legacy. He updated his ideas for a time when information technology and communications are often used to conceal the truth rather than defend it.
Fidel was able to warn that “independence is not a flag, or a hymn, or a coat of arms; it is not a matter of symbolism. Independence depends on development, it depends on technology, it depends on science in today's world.”
As a brilliant journalist—another shared trait of both men—Martí founded the newspaper Patria to intensify the propaganda campaign in favor of independence. He clearly defined the vital importance of defending the unity of the revolutionary forces “in times of danger, to safeguard freedom, to ensure that their forces are invincible through unity, and to prevent the enemy from defeating us again through our disorganization.”
Fidel agreed on the vital importance of this defense to prevent the Revolution from being undermined from within, and emphasized as early as 1963 that “(...) our task is to unite, inside and out; to eliminate everything that divides us, inside and out; to fight for everything that unites us, inside and out. Unity within principles! That is our line!” And he stressed in 1975 that “the union of our peoples is the insurmountable force to achieve and consolidate our definitive independence.”
Writing about Martí on the 131st anniversary of his death in combat, facing the sun as he wished, compels us to proclaim that the Cuban Revolution is the concrete expression of the ideals of independence, social justice, rights for all, education, and health, for which he offered his life, and that his pilgrimage to forge Our America, as he called it, continued with Fidel Castro.
“Move and rejoice, illustrious dead! Rather than waver in the endeavor to make the Homeland free and prosperous, the South Sea will unite with the North Sea, and a serpent will hatch from an eagle’s egg,” Martí declared.
On this anniversary of his death, and in the face of new threats from U.S. imperialism, it is only fitting to reaffirm the enduring relevance of that call to united action to defend the Homeland, condemn the intensification of the genocidal blockade imposed by the United States 64 years ago, and uphold the principles proclaimed by Fidel in his historic concept of Revolution.