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Vol. 82/No. 6 February 12, 2018
(special feature)
Havana events celebrate Martí, decades of revolution
BY JONATHAN SILBERMAN
AND MARTÍN KOPPEL
HAVANA — Carrying what looked like a river of torches, thousands of
youth, overwhelmingly college and high school students, marched from the
steps of the University of Havana through the city’s streets on the
night of Jan. 27. The annual celebration of the anniversary of the birth
of Cuban national hero José Martí is an expression of pride in the
history of revolutionary struggle in Cuba against colonial and
imperialist domination. Similar actions took place across the island.
Cheers greeted the arrival of President Raúl Castro and other Cuban
leaders who joined the front line of the March of the Torches here. In a
festive atmosphere, youth came in contingents from schools across
Havana. The action was sponsored by the Federation of University
Students (FEU) and Federation of High School Students. Also
participating were young workers and military cadets, many of them
members of the Union of Young Communists, as well as working people of
all ages.
FEU national President Raúl Alejandro Palmero told the assembled youth
that the first March of the Torches, called by the student federation,
was held Jan. 27, 1953. It was the first large street action opposing
the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship, which had taken power in a
military coup the previous year.
With that 1953 mobilization, wrote Armando Hart in his firsthand account
Aldabonazo: Inside the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1952-58, “the
university-based movement of civil and political protest took on a new
character.” … The nearly 5,000 students and workers “came equipped with
the means to defend themselves and strike back” if attacked by Batista’s
cops or military. “San Lázaro Street was lit up by their burning
torches, symbol of the liberty that was theirs to conquer.”
The contingent of 500 young Cubans led by Fidel Castro in the 1953 March
of the Torches, wrote Hart — a founding leader of Cuba’s revolutionary
movement — “demonstrated a level of organization and a capacity for
action that distinguished it among the student and popular masses.”
Six months later, on July 26, 1953, many of these same militants joined
Castro in an armed assault on army barracks in the eastern cities of
Santiago de Cuba and Bayamo. The attack opened an insurrectionary
struggle that, under the leadership of the July 26 Movement and Rebel
Army, overthrew the Batista dictatorship on Jan. 1, 1959, and brought a
workers and farmers government to power. The victory established the
first free territory of the Americas. This year’s march paid special
tribute to Fidel Castro’s revolutionary leadership over decades until
his death in 2016.
Martí statue inaugurated
On the morning after the student march, a ceremony was held at daybreak
in a park in Old Havana to inaugurate a striking equestrian statue of
José Martí, central leader of Cuba’s 19th century independence struggle
against Spain. It’s a bronze replica of a statue created by American
artist Anna Hyatt Huntington that has stood in New York’s Central Park
since 1965. It dramatically depicts the independence fighter on
horseback at the moment he was killed in battle in Dos Ríos, Cuba, in 1895.
The event was attended by President Raúl Castro, other Cuban leaders
from all sectors of society, and some 300 guests from the United States,
including more than 100 Cuban-Americans. Among the visitors were not
only supporters of the Cuban Revolution but numerous figures from the
art world who had worked to bring the project to completion, Democratic
and Republican political figures, and some of those who made significant
donations to the $2.5 million fund raised to reproduce the statue and
ship it from the United States.
The keynote speaker was Eusebio Leal, historian of the City of Havana,
for whom the installation of the statue was the culmination of two
decades of effort. Also speaking was Joseph Mizzi, chair of the board of
trustees of the Bronx Museum of the Arts, which led the fundraising
effort. A message from New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was read by José
Velázquez from the mayor’s office. Later that day a concert in Old
Havana paid tribute to Holly Block, former executive director of the
Bronx Museum, who was centrally involved in the project until her death
last year.
A Jan. 28 Reuters article, headlined “Trump Casts Pall on Inauguration
of U.S. Statue of Martí in Cuba,” labeled the ceremony a “sober affair.”
While some guests from the U.S. did see it as another “anti-Trump”
event, for Cubans across the island the weekend actions were a
reaffirmation of their 150-year history of revolutionary struggle.
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