A new January and the same undefeatable dignity

 Around this time 15 years ago I heard the remarkable Franco-Argentine journalist and poet Cristina Castelló say, parodying phrases from a poem by Nicolás Guillén in reference to our country: "Cuba and its mythical people have that known substance with which we can knead a star".
 
 Those of us who love this Island are convinced of the certainty of this revealing poetry, because every January, in this land of insular plurality, we renew our hope of seeing Fidel arrive again in the Victory Caravan, despite those who would like to erase his "uncomfortable" presence right at the gates of the Empire.
 
 Since the onset of our “conquered, not given” Freedom that on January 1st, 1959 brought with it justice, solidarity and love, confidence in victory and optimism in the face of adversity have been part of our existence of Cubans, said to have been “reborn as such from the Cuban Revolution".
 
Today, while millions in many countries suffer the effects of inequality and selfishness of societies ruled by the dominant oligarchy, we enjoy in this small nation a mystique of fraternity, equal right to life, and great devotion for the Homeland that makes us happy and proud of having been born here.
 
There is a social work to defend. In 1959, 30% of the Cubans were illiterate and only 10% had received some general education. Today, more than 99.8% of us are literate, and more than 70 universities train tens of thousands of doctors and other professionals every year, including humble young people from other nations, free of charge, and the health service is universal and free, just to mention a few essential examples.
 
There is also a history that underpins our passionate defense of the Revolution. The dignity of Cubans and their sense of independence and sovereignty are rooted in the very existence of the aboriginal man who inhabited this region several centuries ago, as described by the intellectual Lisandro Otero in reference to ancient chronicles:
 
"When Christopher Columbus saw for the first time the groves and the freshness, the crystal clear water and the amenity of the birds, and the sword has been unsheathed, Hatuey, Guamá and Yaguajay countered the dagger and the pike with the club and the stone. (…) Then came the pirates and later the English. The black Salvador Golomón decapitated the invading French, and the guerrilla Pepe Antonio shot the redcoats of Her Britannic Majesty. Centuries of glory and heroism have passed since that shaped the melting pot of Cuban patriotism. (…) Further on came the shocking Cry of Yara, which marks the route of the independence wars, and a glorious song in Bayamo, which became the anthem of the homeland in the light of the flames of the fire that turned a city into ashes before letting it fall into the hands of the colonial power...”
 
Symbols all of so much rebelliousness, beautifully narrated by the historian, are "...Céspedes’s corpse in San Lorenzo and Martí’s in Dos Ríos; Mella’s heroic death in Mexico and Guiteras’s in El Morrillo; Abel’s shattered body in the Moncada and Che’s in Ñancahuazú.”
 
It is the same people in the course of time, the same "Cuba with its most beloved children, Cuba with the blood of all the humiliated, the oppressed, the miserable, the offended. Cuba of greenness and hurricanes, sun and fruits and light birds, triumphant against its executioners".
 
On May 20, 1902, "the most ambitious and sinister experiment in the history of America" began: the memory of a people had to be erased. But it was not an easy task, a wise voice had already sentenced it "there was that past: thirty years of sacrifice and loads to the machete, and that persecuted destiny: that the first law of the Republic was the cult of the Cubans to the full dignity of man.
 
"In spite of so much ignominy and repression, so much interference and so much Yankee boot, the redeeming memory resurfaced intact. The world learned about the Moncada, the Granma, the epic of the Sierra Maestra and Fidel....
 
"Since then, the whole universe has known about this island that helped the enslaved and segregated African peoples to be free, that made dust and ashes of the Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion, that survived the crisis that closed its doors to trade and put at risk the very survival of an entire people, that has faced the criminal blockade without giving an inch in its principles.
 
"Cuba has been for many years the first country in the world to put the hands of its experienced doctors where others sow death and destruction. The Ebola patients saved by the altruism of our people know it very well!"
 
 It is the same Cuba, 64 years later, transformed into a giant in the face of hardship, a driving force in the fight for Latin American and Caribbean integration and a symbol of the humanized medicine that this planet, afflicted by so many ills, demands. It is a land where hope is reborn in the midst of the huge challenges of the present and where, in this new January of light and hope, revolutionaries of all generations rise to stand up to every challenge and shortage that we will no doubt overcome.