Many scholars and historians from different intellectual and ideological backgrounds have written many books and articles about what most revolutionaries regard as the macrocosm of human solidarity and internationalism. The scholarly sphere has acclaimed the Cuban revolution the enlightenment of the modern age of human civilisation.
Today on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the triumph of the revolution, we dedicate the milestone achievement to its most celebrated guardian of the fatherland, Apostle Jose Marti. We pay tribute to a revolutionary whose genius has contributed immensely to the treasure store of human progress.
We remember the remarkable towering giant of our struggles for liberation. An internationalist whose biography has become a gallery of the greatest memories our struggles.
His profundity has distinguished him the most illustrious revolutionary of our epoch. A revolutionary endowed with great ideas which have nourished the minds and the hearts of generations of man.
At the tender age of nine years, Apostle Jose Marti, accompanied his father to work at a sugar plantation in the province of Matanzas. There he was exposed to the realities of the bloodiest horrors of the system of slavery.
Thirty years thereafter, he composed a poem, elucidating his experiences and lessons at the sugar plantation. The poem says:
“Lighting ploughs a bloody furrow through the gloomy storm clouds and the boat spills out through the gate, by their hundreds the blacks.
The fiery winds were breaking up the bushy plantations’ trees, and the line of the naked slaves were moving, moving.
The thunderstorm was beating against the crowded slave barracks, a mother with her child passed by howling.
Scarlet as in the desert, the sun rose in the horizon, it shone upon a dead slave, hanging from a mountain ceiba.
A child saw him and shook with passion for those who suffer. And beneath the dead man he swore to expiate with his life the crime…”
In 1868 Jose Marti formed the Partido Revolucionario Cubano which became the vanguard of the struggle for independence. He proclaimed that “the party will not work directly for the present or future dominance of any class of the people, but the basic organisation, in accordance with democratic methods, of all active forces in the fatherland”.
After visiting the statue of Simon Bolivar in 1881 in Caracas Venezuela, in recognition of Bolivar as his father, he wrote the following poem:
“They tell how a traveller arrived one day in Caracas at dusk, without shaking off dust of the road, he could not ask where he could eat or sleep, but how he could find the statue of Simon Bolivar.
And they tell how the traveller, amidst the tall and sweet-smelling trees to the square, wept before the statue, that for him seemed to come to life, moving just as the father when the son comes near.
The traveller did well, because all the people of the Americas must love Bolivar as the father.”
This is how he respected Simon Bolivar, whom he regarded as the father of the Americas, of whose sword we were all born. A mentor that he regarded as greater than Caesar, because he was Caesar of liberty.
During the year 1895, Apostle Jose Marti and General Maximo Gomez signed the manifesto of montecristi in the Dominican Republic, which outlined the political reasons that spurred Cuba to launch the war against the Spanish colonial power. In the manifesto, the two internationalists, clarified that the war of independence was not against the nation of Spain, but the colonial regime that held the Cuban colony under its economic and military control.
The manifesto reads this:
“Today, as we proclaim from the threshold of the earth, in veneration of the spirit and doctrines that produce and animate the wholehearted and humanitarian war for which the people of Cuba unite once more, invincible and indivisible, it is fitting that we evoke, as guides and helpers to our people, the magnanimous founders whose labor the grateful country takes up once again, and the honour that must prevent Cubans from wounding by word or deed those who gave their lives for them.
And thus, making this declaration in the name of the patria and deposing before her and her free faculty of constitution the identical labor of two generations, the Delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, created to organise and support the current war, and the Commander in Chief elected by all the active members of the Liberating army, in their shared responsibility to those they represent and in demonstration of the unity and solidity of the Cuban revolution, sign this declaration together…”
Apostle Jose Marti met his untimely death during the skirmishes of the ten years war with Spain. Here are the painstaking words of the renowned Nicaraguan poet and writer, Ruben Dario, upon receiving the news of his death:
“Oh: Cuba, you are certainly very beautiful, and those of your children that fight for your freedom, perform a glorious task, but the blood of Marti was not yours only, it belongs to the entire race, to the entire continent, it belongs to the powerful young that loses on him the first of its teachers, he belongs to the future…”
The revolutionary vanguard of the 26th of July Movement, Moncada revolt, Grandma expedition, Sierra Maestra and the battle of Playa Giron under the leadership of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro, regarded him as the mentor and the father of the revolution. And that each and every of the militants of the revolution carried the imprint of Marti.
Today as we join the millions of the people of the world in celebration of the 65th anniversary of the revolution, we remember the colossus of our struggle for liberation. We remember his humility, tenacity and dedication to our struggle for the emancipation of humanity.
Apostle Jose Marti has gone from our sight, but never from our hearts, we shall forever cherish the memories of his indelible life. His loving memories continue to illuminate the pathways of human civilisation into the future.
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Phatse Justice Piitso, a member of the ANC and the SACP, is a former South African Ambassador to Cuba. He writes in his personal capacity.