Antonio Maceo-Grajales, Deputy Chief of the
Liberation Army, died in combat at San Pedro, Punta Brava, province of Havana,
the 7th of December, 1896. Because of his being the most glorious of our
warriors, the Republic decided that every year, the 7th day of
December would be a day to honor not only him, but all those that in the
independence wars gave their lives in order that we might gain a fatherland. It is, in
us, a date of multiple feelings with diverse signs.
We feel
pain for those who sacrificed themselves
pride because they did not hesitate in doing it,
frustration because we have lost, more than once, the freedom they left us,
and emotion and a burden of obligations in thinking of them and a century away
telling them, in yearned for and impossible communication:
"Thank you
for giving us a fatherland,
and an example so that we know how to love it.
We have tried to copy from your lives
the fight for human dignity and the rejection of oppression.
In that endeavor
the din of battle has not been alien to us,
we have known the proximity of death,
we have seen heroes fall at our sides,
we have suffered persecution and jail,
we have had by us an unforgettable
heroic companion, self-effacing and beautiful,
the Cuban woman.
Just like you
we have known the generosity of Cubans when the fatherland has needed their
generosity,
we have received the friendship and respect of men and women of other lands,
capable of acting oblivious to frontiers, interests and selfishness.
Just like you
we have seen the profiteers obtain benefits from the fatherland's misfortunes,
those "men of claws and fangs", in Marti's words, "whose only fatherland is
gold,"
we know a great number of exiles, militants, and patriots, behind
whom hide some salaried traitors;
we have heard the cowards in spirit who ask
that other nations and their governments
determine the destiny of Cuba.
We know men and women of this land of
Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson,
loyal to the loftiest ideals, who have raised their voices, extended their
friendly hands
so that Cubans may reconquer their freedom and resurrect the spirit therein.
We do not ignore those men, in this same
generous nation, insatiable in
greed and thirst for profit, who play at honor on display-window stages,
who scratch the back of the Cuban Tyrannt,
and push pawns in a match for economic control.
When oppression finally falls, the people find themselves
ruined and exhausted.
Just like you
we know the nobility of the Spaniard who, defying circumstances
and political aberrations, denounces and opposes the disgrace of tyranny in
Cuba
and stands against the shame of our times.
We know the villany of the rapacious, low and uncouth Spaniard, dishonor to
his people,
who roams Cuba hunting for spoils of the tyrannt's corruption,
gorging his brutish and primitive appetites.
Once and again we have witnessed
the indifference of Latin American governments,
not that of their peoples,
before the catastrophe of an oppression
that has bled the Cuban people.
We fight to redeem from servitude or prison
those who, rebelling against tyranny,
were subdued by terror and armed force;
we fight, as you did, to erase the ignominy of those who accept or endorse
the yoke on the cervix of the people.
Just like you
we don't stop in our efforts to achieve, for our land,
a future in liberty, and we have proved, many times:
we are not frightened by the consequences the effort might bring.
And, like you
we know that the Cuban people will rise upon the nation's ruins,
and will erect a destiny that, in the hands of all, will be generous."
Thus we speak, in our thoughts, to the Deputy
Chief General Antonio Maceo-Grajales and his companions in arms, who died to
leave us, in heritage, a Republic.
And since the ability is given us, with a high
forehead, to cast looks and words across the abyss of time, we consider an
honor and feel ourselves with authority, invited by the International
Coordinator of Cuban Ex-Political Prisoners, to evoke the brave independence
fighters, and see them, and accompany them, for an hour, in our hearts.
We have wanted to be, in our hearts, with those
who a century ago died in giving us a fatherland. We felt their warmth, we saw
them in their moments of greatness and when fortune seemed to forget them. For
us there is no other possible attitude than that of revering their deeds and
memory.
We have been with them in the past. Now,
unfulfilled obligations call on us. The present steps back before a commanding
and avid future that asks for our hands, and a task, at whatever cost. We have
to go back.
A last look.
The night is thickly dark. Somewhere in the
underbrush we glimpse a dim light. Let us approach.
On makeshift wooden stands are two corpses,
their clothes bloodied. Four candles of yellow wax, renewed with zeal, frame
an improvised funeral chamber, where for hours adjutants have made an honor
guard while chiefs, officers and soldiers file by the ones lying there. Some
touch, some kiss, in a farewell ritual, the inert hands and faces of the
Deputy Chief and the young captain who chose to die at his side.
Let us take our distance, out of respect for
those men who take upon themselves the grief of a people, of a generation and
all generations of Cubans who succeed each other through the centuries.
Now we perceive more movement among
them. They lift the corpses, put them across the saddles of horses they have
brought near. Others start mounting on their own. They put out the lights.
They go to a place that will be known by only a few and will remain secret.
There they will bury those who were their companions in arms, who belong since
then to a grateful people and to the ages. It will take years until under the
Republic, their remains are unearthed, and in solemn exequies are taken to
their place of final rest.
Let us go away.
