Just two years ago it was a century since the U.S. Comptroller in Cuba, Mr. Wood, described Juan Gualberto Gomez as a "nigger with a stinking reputation" and all because the distinguished patriot and incorruptible journalist opposed the Platt Amendment, that sad appendix that trampled on our independence.
Some decades before, José Martí had discovered in all its magnitude the darkest entrails of a nation that, in spite of its splendor and opulence, was rising on the dangerous pillars of hatred and ambitions. Marti's vision led him to confess (in a letter to Manuel Mercado) what would be the cause of all his monumental intellectual and patriotic work: "to prevent in time, with the independence of Cuba, the United States from spreading through the Antilles and falling, with that force, on our lands of America." In the same way, Maceo sentenced that it was preferable to rise or fall alone, than to contract debts of gratitude with those of the imperial appetite.
Mella did not hesitate for an instant to declare himself anti-imperialist and for that conviction he gave his life. Fidel, seeing the fragments of shrapnel dropped by the planes of Batista's tyranny on the huts of the Sierra Maestra, on which one could read the inscription USAF (United States Air Force), wrote indignantly to Celia Sanchez: "Seeing the rockets they threw at Mario's house, I have sworn to myself that the Americans are going to pay dearly for what they are doing."
History has never been free from the perfidious intentions of the North, hoping that complicit silences or petty interests will definitely open the doors to plans of political and cultural annexation. Now, some with frustrated souls and painful uprooting are once again wielding the repugnant idea of begging for favors and in exchange, painfully ceding sovereignty.
Such a thought, disloyal and little attached to the history of independence that has woven this Island, is doomed to the most resounding failure, because if such dismal success were achieved, the effort of so many would have been useless, and here there is much loyalty sprinkled with the blood of the best Cubans.
Translated by ESTI
