There are pains that do not expire, even when those who have felt them deeply no longer walk on the face of the Earth; because if the irreparable suffering of a mother or a father is always burning fire on the skin of every good soul, if they move the widowed bride, or the orphaned families of their best children, the injustice that snatches lives in bloom is a stain for all times.
When one thinks of November 27, 1871 in a detached manner, the 153 years that have passed do not prevent the horror from returning. The eight medical students, shot for allegedly desecrating the grave of a Spanish journalist, are then our brothers; as is our indignation and sadness that José Martí channeled into verses:
Beloved corpses, those of you who one day / Reveries of my homeland, / Throw, throw on my forehead / Dust of your gnawed bones / Touch my heart with your hands / Groan in my ears!
Victims of hatred and impotence, the bodies of Anacleto, Carlos Augusto, Eladio, Carlos Verdugo, Juan Pascual, Ángel, José and Alonso attempted to assassinate an ideal. Their youth, full of promise, represented the future of a Cuba made by and for Cubans, an independent Cuba.
But what was intended to be a lesson and a threat was, instead, an embarrassment for the executing hand. The fact was inscribed as one of the most terrible crimes committed by Spanish colonialism on the Island; and the memory of the dead showed that the worthy Cubans could expect nothing from the metropolis, nothing!
The road was, on the contrary, the honor, that of "the blacks that -as Pedro de la Hoz says in these same pages- tried to rescue them from the criminal cruelty of the colonial hosts (...) five, at least, in a forced and perverse anonymity." They also died in the arms of the grateful Homeland, and began, with their death, life.
The remembrance and tribute to those who fell under irrationality and barbarism is not a mere exercise of historical remembrance, but the fulfillment of a commitment with the innocent blood that has fertilized the deepest yearnings of this people.
In his speech of November 27, 1960, Fidel said: "That is the Revolution, the one that seeks the best of the Homeland," and that seed of light is also in what has been and is venerated. Therein lies the honor.
