A few days ago, in the midst of the energy emergency and the threat of hurricane Oscar, we commemorated October 20, and in our history it is a day of patriotic consecration; part of a transcendental list of days full of spiritual mysticism and revolutionary epic.
Mounted on his horse, the Bayamese Perucho Figueredo made the road to freedom vibrate with unequaled emotion. A hymn would become a permanent call to the struggle for Cuba and for Cuba. And there, on October 20, Cuban Culture Day, one of the patriotic essences was reaffirmed: our culture of resistance.
There are very solid roots that, without realizing it, perhaps because of the convulsive and unbalanced present, arm us with a natural and very typical force of Cubans, which mysteriously makes us resist; which does not mean resigning ourselves to live a harsh reality, much less conforming to the situation we live in without doing what is necessary to change it for the good of all Cubans, nor assuming a contemplative attitude of the bad things that have been done.
It is a resistance that rises above the obstacles, difficulties, merciless attacks, and the ravages committed. The one that made possible our heroic deeds for the independence of the Homeland, which long before embraced our aborigines and slaves, who under the oppressive yoke also raised their redeeming hand.
To resist, for us Cubans, is an act of heroism, of common sense (how much many lack it), of discursive coherence in the continuous revolutionary harangue, to go out on the road with the adarga in our arms. To resist, for us Cubans, is full dignity; it is courage and firmness in the ideas, in the doctrines, in the ethical postulates that have always defined us.
We are resisting the enemy onslaught, that which has been trying to suffocate us since long before the triumph of the Revolution; and it is not easy, quite the contrary; in the face of the intensification of a war full of terror against the Cuban people, under the permanent siege of the worst of monsters, that which disdains us, which puts its boot on us, which poisons our minds and conquers, as a classic dominator, to manage at will the thoughts and feelings of those who fall or succumb to that deadly poison.
It is a resounding no to imperialism whose main face is there, in the United States, in that subjugating system, in that criminal policy of blockades and cognitive and psychological attacks of incalculable proportions. It is a firm No to the media and cultural war that is being waged against us.
Let us return to José Martí, the spiritual guide of the Cuban nation: "The greatest war waged against us is a war of thought, let us win it with thought." And it is also a war of feelings; therefore, let us feel the Homeland with our history as a shield, the pride of being Cubans wherever we are, even in the worst circumstances.
Resisting is a call to unity as a guarantee of survival. United we are stronger, resistance is better consecrated. Let us not forget our essence, like that concept of Homeland: "Homeland is a community of interests, unity of traditions, unity of goals, sweet and consoling fusion of loves and hopes." The Apostle of Independence defined it this way because he was convinced that we had a common feeling, a cloud of ideas that would always keep us with the oar on the bow, an identity that makes us Cubans, a culture that expresses our way of doing and being.
Our culture of resistance must make us accomplices of virtue, worthy heirs of a whole pleiad of women and men who shed their blood for us, our children and our children's children. And this invites us, with all our strength, to maintain intact the principles that have marked the resistance of Cubans. It is the ethical expression of a people that has known how to overcome every drama it has lived through.
We cannot forget that which strengthens us, which embraces us in the midst of the bloody reality, which must always remind us that our Revolution is of the humble, by the humble and for the humble. It is the permanent presence of Fidel, his definition of Revolution.
Our culture of resistance calls us to live the Revolution, not to live from it; it calls us to sow ideas and conscience, not to harbor selfish feelings and exaltation of the material; it calls us to safeguard the spiritual fabric of the nation, never to divide us, to destroy ourselves.
There is a very deep root, an emancipating and liberating character of Cuban men and women. There is humanism and culture of peace, there is love above all, there is manifest solidarity. There are identity values that we have to defend, there is a history that protects us, a challenging present that puts us in tension, but which we will know how to overcome for the better future that we need and that is in our hands to create.
Our homeland has been dreamed, thought and sung. It is the dream, the thought and the song of a people that does not give up, that is not soft, that rises, that loves and founds.
With all the worthy, and for the good of all, because to be patriotic is not to be selfish, because new pines are those who defend the same ideal (love for the homeland and its defense bathed in sacrifices, regardless of biological age), because doing is the best way to say; and saying is doing if it is said on time; let us sing today, with more strength, feeling and pride than yesterday, our national anthem. In its verses is the essence of the homeland.
