"We Cubans who today chose the military profession as the meaning of our lives, those of us who are the fruits of the resistance of a people who preferred a thousand times to sink into the sea before betraying the glory that has been lived, we ratify once again, from this historic place, that "whoever tries to take over Cuba will only collect the dust of its soil soaked in blood, if he does not perish in the battle (...)". This is the war of an entire people".
In El Cacachual, sacred site of the Homeland, where Major General Antonio Maceo, Lieutenant General of the Liberation Army, and his aide, Captain Panchito Gómez Toro, are reborn in each day of heroic resistance and victory, raised his voice the third year cadet Alberto Reyes Cuevas, from the General Antonio Maceo FAR Inter-arms School, Order Antonio Maceo.
The 34th anniversary of Operation Tribute, in which others, like Maceo and Panchito, exalted the altar of the Homeland in African lands, was remembered in the Mausoleum that houses those symbols of a daring leader, of inviolable principles, and of passionate loyalty to the cause of his people; and of Mambi and rebellious youth, committed to the future of their compatriots. It could not be any other day than the seventh day of the last month of the year to pay tribute to the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, on its 30th anniversary, the same day in which, 89 years ago, a paradigm of revolutionary, Frank País García, was born, just as titanic, a paradigm of revolutionary: Frank País García.
Accompanied by the chords of La Rosa Blanca, and on behalf of the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz; the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, and the people, floral offerings were placed to Major General Antonio Maceo and Captain Panchito Gómez, as well as to the outstanding combatant Blas Roca Calderío and Juan Fajardo Vega, the last mambí.
The political act and military ceremony, on the occasion of the 127th anniversary of the fall in combat of Maceo and his aide, were presided over by the member of the Political Bureau and Minister of the FAR, General of the Army Corps Álvaro López Miera; by Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee and head of its Ideological Department, and by Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar, first secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Party in Havana.
