The First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, led the political act and military ceremony on the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the death of Major General Máximo Gómez Báez, Chief General of the Liberation Army.
The tribute took place on the morning of June 17, in front of the Mausoleum erected in the Colón Cemetery, where the remains of the man who – it was said during the ceremony – "earned by his own merit the high political and military responsibility of holding the highest position in the Liberation Army of Cuba" rest.
The tribute began with military honors and the laying of a floral offering on behalf of the people of Cuba. Brigadier General José Amado Ricardo Guerra, a member of the Political Bureau and secretary of the Council of Ministers, other leaders of the Party and Government, and heads of the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution attended.
In the central words of the commemoration, Division General Vicente Rodríguez Miró, director of the Academy of the General Máximo Gómez Corps, highlighted the leadership of the Generalissimo during our wars of independence.
The actions and events that are recorded in the brilliant career of Gómez, who led the first machete charge against a column of the colonial army, comprised of 700 men, made him the most distinguished military leader of the Cuban forces in the Ten Years' War, and a mentor to the heroic general of the Fatherland.
In light of the tumultuous days we are living today, Rodríguez Miró called to return to Gómez, as a politician, humanist, intellectual, ethical man, and role model.
He recalled that the Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz was a profound scholar of Gómez's life and work, and the Army General Raúl Castro Ruz creatively took on the rich combative history inherited from him as commander of the 2nd Front Frank País.
