If we can rightly say that one of our contemporaries is a unique, unrepeatable being, it is Fidel. This does not imply putting him on a pedestal at a distance, but rather assuming his legacy so that it continues to be useful and productive.
The question is to avoid confining him to a list of public places or well-known phrases. Just as he understood Martí, we must understand him. He brought Martí back to life when he assaulted the Moncada; when he won over the best men and women of his generation, and others, to the revolutionary cause; when he approached the transformation of the social foundations of exploitation and injustice with a sense of duty, audacity and dialectical discipline.
He learned, conceived, put into practice and taught us of socialism like Mariátegui imagined. Not a carbon copy, but a heroic creation, inventing and re-inventing itself continuously, but always on the basis of firm principles
Fidel’s comment in Baraguá, in 2000, was not a conjunctural response, at a time when the country was immersed in the battle to win the return of a Cuban child abducted in the United States, but rather a profound, long-term projection.
He spoke of how Cuba “is discovering itself, its geography, its history, its cultured intelligence, its children, its youth, its teachers, its doctors, its professionals, the enormous human work created over 40 years of heroic struggle against the mightiest power that has ever existed. Cuba has more confidence in itself that ever before, and understands its modest but fruitful and promising role in the world today.”
He continued, “Its invincible weapons are its revolutionary, humanist, universal ideas. They cannot be touched by nuclear weapons, by military or scientific technology, monopoly control of the mass media, or the empire’s political and economic power, in a world increasingly more exploited, more insubordinate and more rebellious, which more than ever is losing its fear and arming itself with ideas.”
These are times to continue discovering Cuba’s depths, the Cuba we need, which nothing and no one can diminish, much less take from us.
This is the moment to update our accumulated experience to confirm the direction we are taking, and, at the same time, put to good use new experiences gained in continuing our project.
Nothing will be more useful in this endeavor than understanding Fidel’s way of taking action, of reacting in any given situation, evaluating what he had done and what he was not able to do. Because lessons must be learned from limitations and errors, as well as his criticisms and self-criticism, to cure ourselves, once and for all, of occasionally recurrent, harmful behaviors in daily life, including: inertia, routine reactions, interminable delays, irresponsibility, triumphalism, and improvisation.
Just recently, upon revisiting a special appearance of Eusebio Leal on Cuban television’s Mesa Redonda program, I was reminded of how fully this exceptional man, our historian, assimilated the teachings of the most exceptional Cuban of our era, when he stated, “The greatest gift we can give Fidel is to do our duty; let there be no rest as long as there is an injustice to right, in any part of the world or here, as long as there is a tear to wipe, someone who needs a lift along the way. This is the only way I admit the much-repeated idea ‘I am Fidel.’ No, I am not Fidel, I want to be like him, and the only way to give him continuity is to do this.”
Someone who knew him well and was his friend, Gabriel García Márquez, captured the dimension of what Fidel represents with these words, “He has the conviction that the greatest accomplishment of a human being is the full development of one’s conscience, and that moral incentives, more than material ones, are capable of changing the world and advancing History.”
Herein lies a deeply humanist conception of what is required to avoid leaving Fidel in the past, to count on him in the times to come. To awaken everyday with him.
