The insult to Martí, another lesson and warning to the enemy

For those who nowadays pay, poke and make mistakes about our feelings of patriotism and anti-imperialism, history has in store another unforgettable lesson: the Cuban people’s reaction to an affront by a U.S. sailor and his drunken shipmates to the statue of José Martí, in Havana's Central Park, on March 11, 1949.

The outrage at the defiling of one of the nation’s greatest patriotic symbols soon became a defiant popular mobilization that forced the U.S. ambassador to publicly apologize. However, as befits his government’s usual arrogance, he secretly demanded the release of the accused and prevented them from being brought to trial, a typical feature of then-neocolonial Cuba as a result of the first U.S. intervention and the Platt Amendment, supposedly abolished years before.

One thing was clear: the children of this land were still as willing to defend their heroes and their values as the founding fathers before them did in the fight for independence and sovereignty. And the time would come to finish the work of the revolutions.

The conflict blew up after the morning daily Alerta published the following morning the photo of the sailor Richard Choingsby sitting astride the statue of the Apostle, on which he had also urinated, while one of his cronies was also trying to join him.

According to witnesses, many patrons of a nearby bar came out to face the impudent and disrespectful Marines whose visits and stays in the Cuban capital were marked by noisy brawls in bars and brothels. And since no police officer did anything to stop the shameless act, indignant passers-by and local residents who joined the fray in increasing numbers forced the police to arrest the insulting sailors.

Organized in a big demonstration, university students marched to Central Park and paid tribute to the Apostle and promised to fight for justice against the sailors, and from there they headed for the U.S. Embassy. Among them was a young Fidel Castro, later treated together with other fellow demonstrators for bruises received in the beating that the police gave them as they approached the diplomatic mission.

It was the notorious hitman Rafael Salas Cañizares, head of the Batista police, who led the repression against the students and the people who repudiated the offense. Such was Cuba’s venal subordination to the northern master.

Since its arbitrary intervention at the end of a war that the Cubans had almost won, the United States imposed its laws and conditions and thwarted the freedom effort. However, José Martí had already warned the Cuban people in his political testament, and they were learning from him and embracing his lessons as part of their own sense of national dignity.

Undoubtedly, those feelings and ideals are still here today, undefeated, growing and renewed by the new times, however difficult and challenging they may be.