With marked significance in the history of Cuba is inscribed on October 10, 1868 , and it is because on that date the bold decision and the immortal gesture of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes made to ring with a new sound the bell “La Demajagua”, announcing the struggle for the full freedom and dignity of Cubans.
It has been 157 years since on that day, a fierce group of intransigent patriots and freed slaves set in motion and forever the Revolution of “the humble and for the humble”.
On that October 10, 1868, men led by Céspedes took part in the first radical act in the history of Cuba: the abolition of slavery, a decision “was the most radically revolutionary measure that could be taken in a genuinely slave society”.
To say of Fidel in reference to that event: “simply means the beginning of a hundred years of struggle, the beginning of the Revolution in Cuba, because there has only been one Revolution in Cuba: that started by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes on October 10, 1868 and which our people is carrying forward at this moment”.
What we continue to be today, the first Socialist Revolution in America, is the work of many generations of Cubans, especially those who without any other weapon than their machetes won sublime battles in the undefeated fields of Free Cuba.
By the lineage of those who with their example gave valiantly their lives in the insurgent camps, we have the strength to challenge the complexities of today’s world, marked by the pretensions of the US government to stifle the Cuban Revolution, one that has and will have no setbacks in its concepts of freedom, dignity, social justice and independence.
And it is also because the Cuban revolutionaries, with infinite gratitude, know how to honor the forgers of our rich patriotic traditions, among them Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, as demanded by Martí, with reverence and tenderness.
