August 13, 2018
Dr. Graziella Pogolotti in an article published in Cubarte makes an analysis today, August 13, the birthday of Fidel Castro, of the historical significance that the figure of the leader had.
"Fidel is Cuba because the Comandante embodied the deepest essences of the nation and culture. After the founders of the homeland, he wove together in the same fabric, memory and dreams, the key to the mystery of the Island always pursued by poets.
History is a living force built again and again, made tangible work by the hands of men and built by the boundless intangible universe, a union of myths and remembrances, of moments of fullness and moments of pain, of personal and collective happenings, of the arts that accompany us, of the profile of heroes and the friendly hand of all ages. Rooted in memory, an inseparable part of it, dreams are forged. From Céspedes we received the first gesture, from Martí, the action, the preaching, the poetic vision and the basis of a politics founded on ethics. From all of them we received that the project of nation rests on the human being who sustains it.
Life charges yesterday's words with new meanings. From the perspective of now, José Martí was the intellectual author of the Assault on the Moncada Barracks, because he represented the synthesis of a memory interwoven with dreams. The gesture of the fighters who defied the military fortress of tyranny returned to Cubans the light of a possible dream, the unstoppable impulse of hope, the faith that unites and saves and confidence in the latent potentiality that resides in each one of us. Therefore, the defeat was apparent. It was the announcement of a new beginning. In that way, a handful of men, a small vanguard became a people. Many fell in the Sierra and in the plains. But a multitude was willing to immolate itself at Girón and during the October Crisis.
A few became the quarry of a great mass. The reasons are numerous. The long-postponed Agrarian Reform was carried out. Illiteracy was swept away and there were schools for all. Housing and medical services were accessed. In the universe of the intangible, lost independence was conquered. The dignity of the person was rescued, of those marginalized because of poverty or the color of their skin. The dignity of the nation was rescued, which had its own voice and achieved prominence on the world stage.
Entire generations have grown up alongside Fidel's word. His speeches constitute an exemplary pedagogical method, valid for all forms of education. Never authoritarian, he reconstructs the cause of things and advances through the formulation of successive whys posed from the first person and shared with the audience. It is a way of teaching how to think, of tracing the path toward independence of criteria, of positioning oneself at the antipodes of dogmatic recipes. Thus he was able to make an anti-imperialist revolution against the army, thus we overcame and managed to survive until now. They have been years of intense learning, but from his legacy of history and concepts, much remains to be learned.
In his thought, today's bewildered left will have to find sources of primary importance. We are part of it, but situated on the frontier of imperialism in moments of intense danger, we have to solve our own problems.
An insatiable reader, Fidel devoured texts on history, political science, economics, literature, fundamental matters of the sciences. These scattered materials were not assimilated as a sum of data. An intellectual in every sense, for Fidel, such varied sources of knowledge were articulated around an irradiating axis: the destiny of the human being. He thus elaborated a knowledge of humanistic inspiration. He transcended borders. With the reference of a classical tradition, he maintained the greatest possible updating. Neither did he limit himself to doctrinal boundaries. He assimilated whatever came from anywhere with signs of usefulness. But he did it from the perspective of critical thinking, attentive to the here, the now and the specificity of our cultures and needs, always curious and questioning, never mimetic.
His integrating capacity of knowledge and his humanistic vision articulated the unavoidable conceptual considerations and closeness to the concrete human being. Theory did not translate into abstraction and practice did not translate into mere utilitarianism. The faculty of concentration was complemented by meticulous observation. Thus it manifested itself in his dealings with his interlocutors, always attentive to signs of any suffering, to the revealing taste of unease or concern. The chivalrous gesture was a reflection of delicacy of spirit. From those qualities flowed his talent as a strategist in military and also in political matters. Upon studying the tradition of socialist thought with a critical eye, he shed the mechanistic legacy, coming from positivism, so influential in our lands.
Without ignoring the weight of objective factors, he took into account the role of subjectivity. He bet in favor of the human being. He had confidence in him. Without underestimating the material needs that beset us, he believed that the decisive battle was waged in terms of human improvement. He had learned it from his readings of José Martí. Therefore, his will to sow the future was unbreakable, to privilege education, the will to self-improvement and to promote the development of the most advanced science, on a poor and small island. Always telling the truth while looking people in the eye is a sign of confidence in the person, increases his self-esteem and frees us from the fatalism that weighed so heavily on our consciences during the neocolonial Republic.
Like some exceptional artists he knew how to discover in reality what was not yet visible to all. According to García Márquez, he saw grass growing.
He stirred up ideas, rescued independence and sovereignty. He sowed science, culture, self-esteem, faith in our strength and in the future, that unifying crucible that moves mountains."
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