What if we don’t understand each other? Of course, we will never understand each other if it is about principles, we Cubans are living examples of this since I can remember.
The Pact of Zanjón is an example of this, which these days marked 143 years of its embarrassing signing. Forceful and definitive was the protest that followed that document, the one that on a bright March 15th stood up like the royal palm itself, without bending, without fear of height, the wind or the sun; on the contrary, honored and brave Cubans represented by a man like few, with an immense heart in the center of his chest that never knew what betrayal against his people was.
Antonio Maceo, the Bronze Titan, one of the most illustrious Cubans of thought and action, was the main figure, an example that should guide us nowadays.
There it was very explicit that no one bends us, much less in that way. Stories, events, facts, anecdotes, of all of them we have hundreds to tell, but today, so close to another unique date.
I want to remember it and link it with February 24th, 1895, a date full of patriotism; a unique day in which the Necessary War began, a day that was misnamed Grito de Baire, and of which the distinguished historian Hortensia Pichardo deepened, clarified, and I quote: “… To make the heroic Baire the isolated or main center of the uprising, would be a wrong choice because on February 24th, 1895, as a result of a wise tactical orientation by Martí, what took place was, although not on the scale foreseen and needed by the plan designed by Martí, a simultaneous uprising, with which the Delegate of the Cuban Revolutionary Party aspired for the warlike flame to ignite throughout the Island, to allow the Necessary War to have -as he used to say-, the brevity and the effectiveness of a lightning … “. And luckily for the people of Camagüey, on that day, but 102 years later, the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba approved, through the Decree #213, the creation of the Office of the Historian of Camagüey city, a cultural institution that has within its dissimilar functions that of “preserving the material and spiritual memory of the province as an expression of national history, disseminating and honoring it by all communication means and by its continuous action on these assets of the nation and thus contributing to the patriotic-military and internationalist education of citizens … “, a work to which this institution has been faithful and today can show encouraging results every day more; thanks to the tenacity and selflessness of its workers, from those who had the great honor of being founders, to the current ones, who feel pride and admiration for it.
Today, in the light of the almost twenty years of having been part of them and of continuing to be their unconditional collaborator, I congratulate my colleagues and I congratulate myself for being part of this institution, and for continuing to defend, like that February 24th, the vital plan Martí had in mind.
Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García
