The eloquence of the image grows with time. It is a photo taken at the Vivac prison in Santiago de Cuba. In the foreground, a young man of tall stature who is morally strong enough to face the difficult situation: the unexpected setback of the movement he leads. He has been taken there as a prisoner for having organized and carried out the assault on the Moncada barracks a few days earlier. An officer with a sense of honor, Pedro Sarría, after capturing him in the vicinity of the eastern city, prevents his assassination, as happened to most of his comrades arrested after their participation in the armed action.
Behind the young leader, Fidel Castro, on the wall of the enclosure a picture with the portrait of José Martí can be seen. Fidel and Martí, a fruitful and infinite bond. One, the most universal of Cubans, the pinnacle of 19th century independence thinking, the driving force behind the necessary war for the emancipation of the homeland; The other, aware that the Republic of that time was incomplete and that Marti’s postulates had been betrayed, not only by the treacherous coup of March 10, 1952, but also by the succession of misrule and misgovernment throughout half a century, decided to undertake a revolution that would transform the national life under the principles of absolute sovereignty, social justice and the dignity of all Cubans.
Thus, to attribute to Martí the intellectual authorship of July 26th was a lucid and consistent act. If, as the Revolution advanced, with the seizure of power after another necessary war, and the postponed dreams of the humblest citizens of the homeland became a reality, the theoretical bases of the vanguard assumed and radiated the ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin as the foundations of economic transformation and social change, Martí’s legacy became more present and necessary than ever as a guiding compass of ethics and the affirmation of identity. The Moncada Manifesto was explicit in stressing: “The Revolution declares its love and confidence in the virtue, honor and decorum of man”.
Martí jumped from marble to life in educational programs, in the democratization of cultural processes, in the formation of civic values. In those spaces where Martí has been absent, where he has not been taken into account, ethics fail and values are absent. When we observe that selfishness, individualism and human miseries are unleashed, we notice that Martí is not there. In the face of indolence, lack of commitment and conformism, there is nothing better than Martí’s encouragement to overcome inertia. Nothing to do with Martí, of course, with those who yearn for the tutelage of Washington, who appeal to hatred and bet on social fracture, who unsuccessfully try to fragment, manipulate and decontextualize Martí to render his seed useless.
The Moncada took place right in the year of the centenary of Martí’s birth. On the upcoming January 28, 2023 we will commemorate the 170th anniversary of the arrival to the world of the Master and the seven decades of the July 26th actions in Santiago and Bayamo, and of the proclamation of the Moncada program in that formidable and anticipatory plea that we know as History will absolve me.
It is not a question of making Martí fashionable but of feeling him endearing, indispensable. To internalize, as Cintio Vitier explained in his essay That Sun of the Moral World, as the cornerstone of the new social ethic as the axis of the Revolution, “a concrete and practical ethic founded on the values of work and the principles of anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, anti-racism and community and internationalist solidarity, all contained in Martí’s ideology.” In which “the good is the common good, communitarian; to do good is to do what is good for the community, not abstract but living, formed by individuals who realize themselves insofar as they contribute unselfishly to the realization of others”.
It is about placing in the foreground the actuality of these words pronounced by Fidel in 1990 about the permanent validity of José Martí: “Today more than ever we need his thoughts, more than ever we need his ideas, more than ever we need his virtues.”
Translated by ESTI