What happened on that day, April 16, in the heart of the Cuban capital, was more than a proclamation, born in the heat of collective rage or sadness over the funeral of good Cubans bombed at large with the support of a powerful foreigner. It was a moat, a milestone, a beginning and a break.
The weight of the date, with all its meanings (positive or not), has accompanied us these last 62 years, during which there has been no shortage of arguments about whether this was a hasty act due to the hostility of a well-known neighbor. to the North, or it was a fact that would have happened anyway as a result of unstoppable radicalization.
Actually, since then, Cuba began to pave a long way, which gave the last name to the Revolution that began in 1959, as a sign of national independence and sovereignty. This route was even born with a specific challenge outlined by Fidel from the historical angle of 23 and 12: to become a process that is completely opposite to the “exploitation of man by man.”
As if that weren’t enough, the leader set a more difficult task: to build a socialist and democratic revolution “of the humble, with the humble and for the humble”, for which one would have to give one’s life.
While it is true that today we are in a completely different era than the prelude to the mercenary invasion, it is also a stone-walled truth that we need to analyze to what extent the dreams and projects of that time were realized. distorted or broken.
It would be too serious a mistake, I would say fatal, to abandon the aspiration of 1961, which is associated with Marty’s desire to throw his fate on the side of the poor of the earth or with the Apostle’s own idea to build a Republic with genuine popularity.
Even worse would be to justify mistakes or misrepresentations, or blindly believe that we are on the “right track”, as is sometimes repeated, forgetting Fidel’s own strong warning in the Aula Magna of the University of Havana (November 17, 2005). .), associated with ignorance of the structure of the new society. “Among the many mistakes that we all made, the most important mistake was to believe that someone knows about socialism or that someone knows how socialism is built,” he stressed at the time.
The nation has reached this point, saved from annexationism, which is no small conquest, but which must not lead us to conformism, one of the evils that so often afflict us. Cuban socialism, 62 years after its proclamation, cannot be low or half-hearted participation, non-existent popular control, schematism and stagnation.
Socialism “cannot be a permanent bow to poverty” because “it must strive for progress even in the face of external economic wars,” as I pointed out in these pages after the unprecedented street protests of July 11, 2021. Socialism is not an empty slogan, bureaucracy and hype, rallying and blocking, visibility and a geometric outcome.
In particular, we need originality, creativity, revolutionary confrontation, constant debate, criticism and self-criticism, sensitivity, democracy and freedom. By the way, these last two concepts were appropriated by various opponents of Cuba and at some point even put pressure on them.
It should be one’s own and collective construction, achievements and concrete facts, history in the present, Marty at the head of the nation, the concept of the Revolution without abstractions. First of all, it must be true. The same truth that Fidel enlightened us from the famous corner of Havana; the truth that he shocked us with in 2005 when he warned us that if we didn’t take care of him, we could destroy socialism with our own hands.
Source: Juventud Rebelde