Santiago de Cuba.— The intense working day of the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba yesterday was marked by the commitment with the Homeland. When a soft wind was blowing the plumes of palms of the Santa Ifigenia patrimonial cemetery, the First Secretary of the Central Committee and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, placed a bouquet of flowers in front of the monolith that treasures the ashes of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz.

Accompanied by the member of the Political Bureau and Secretary of Organization, Roberto Morales Ojeda, the president also honored José Martí, National Hero; Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and Mariana Grajales, Father and Mother of the Homeland, as a token of the continuity of the only Cuban Revolution, which began on October 10, 1868.

Díaz-Canel went to the cemetery, National Monument, where some one hundred thousand Santiago inhabitants, representing the Cuban people, made a pilgrimage last December 4, on the eighth anniversary of the deposit of the ashes of our historic leader. Previously, he had evaluated the socio-economic situation of the municipalities of the provinces of Guantánamo and Santiago de Cuba, as well as the progress of the recovery of San Antonio del Sur, after the attacks of hurricane Oscar.

There are human beings who, although they are not physically among us, survive in the imaginary and daily actions, not only of their contemporaries but also of the generations that succeed them.
This quality is not granted by decree, nor is it the result of impositions of any kind. On the contrary, it is only possible to ascend to such a dimension when the peoples identify, and assume, that the one who inspires them is a paradigm, from the unfinished, of the better world to conquer.
Fidel Castro is, in his own right, and merits that can never be sullied, one of those chosen in any latitude. His imprint, in innumerable dimensions, goes far beyond the Antillean geography to penetrate, to the marrow, in the very marrow of the Global South that does not resign itself to be vilified.
Since the dawn of the revolutionary struggle, it penetrated deep into the hearts of millions of people in the most varied latitudes. After the epic triumph of 1959, and the extraordinary journey undertaken to mold a new man and a new woman, and a society emancipated from capitalist hindrances, the strength of his example increased every day.
He shone with unparalleled light, not only in the “luminous and sad” days of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, as he was described by that other giant of action and ideas, Che Guevara, but in each of the undertakings he undertook in favor of the peoples of the world.
That rebellious and indomitable bearded man, who built bridges everywhere for the sake of world peace, gave himself body and soul to the revolutionary cause with passion and sidereal energies. The permanent contact with the people was his greatest stimulus, and the sap from which he drank to defeat imperialism in every trench.
It is not possible, in a few lines, to examine all his contributions. In his brilliant performance there are countless pillars. The struggle for world peace, and the cessation of the arms race and denuclearization, is one of them.

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Fidel lives in the work of a people that resists, creates and overcomes. Photo: Dunia Álvarez Palacios

Santiago de Cuba – More than 100,000 people from Santiago de Cuba made a tightly packed pilgrimage yesterday to pay homage to the Commander-in-Chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, on the seventh anniversary of the burial of his ashes in the patrimonial cemetery of Santa Ifigenia.

From the Plaza de la Revolución Mayor General Antonio Maceo Grajales, passing through Patria Avenue, the united march arrived at the cemetery where, early in the morning, a wreath had been placed in the name of the Cuban people, before the monolith that treasures Fidel’s ashes.

Present were the member of the Central Committee and first secretary of the Party in the province, José Ramón Monteagudo Ruiz, other political and government leaders, as well as Fidel Antonio Castro Smirnov, advisor of the Honorary Chair for the study of the work and thought of Fidel Castro, of the University of Oriente, and grandson of the historical leader.

On the premises of the Altar of the Homeland, the people of Santiago expressed their feelings of gratitude and tribute to the best disciple of José Martí. Castro Smirnov wrote to Granma that “today we come with the immense joy of bringing Fidel in our thoughts. It is moving to receive his closeness and strength, which he always gave us and will continue to give us”.

“A Peronist agitator of Cuban origin”. This is how the CIA described Fidel, according to journalist Rogelio García Lupo (from Prensa Latina) in his book Últimas noticias de Fidel Castro y el Che (2007).
A young Fidel, 21 years old, went to Bogota as a representative of the University Student Federation of Cuba to the counter-summit that was the Pan American Conference, a tool of the Empire, which from that year on would be replaced by the OAS. On that April 9, Fidel expected to meet with the leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, but he was assassinated at noon. The Bogotazo took place, and although Fidel was not Colombian, he was there, at the side of the people.
According to García Lupo, Fidel “saved his life in a Cadillac protected by an Argentine flag stretched over the roof and with the diplomatic plates clearly visible”. Hence the hasty and fallacious conclusion of the Yankee spies. He was not Argentine, but that CIA document shows the Latin American patriot character of the man who, ten years later, would lead the necessary war.
In 1947, Fidel had been involved in the failed Expedition of Cayo Confites, integrated by Cubans and Dominicans, and whose objective was to free the Dominican Republic from the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. He was not Dominican, but at the age of 20 he had already made his internationalism clear.
Then came the Moncada barracks attack, the imprisonment and a stay in Mexico, to gain momentum and return to the struggle. There, in June 1955, he would meet Ernesto Guevara, an Argentine doctor introduced to him by Raul at Maria Antonia’s home, a Cuban exiled in Mexico City.
With the help of El Cuate, they would get the Granma yacht and the necessary weapons, and another Mexican named Arsacio Vanegas would train them. Fidel was not Mexican, but while eating tortillas he made that sentence: “If I go out, I arrive. If I arrive, I enter. If I enter, I triumph”. The conviction of reason… and of the human spirit.
He was not Puerto Rican either, but he was very clear that Cuba and Puerto Rico are the two wings of a bird. On one occasion he clarified: “Cuba’s solidarity with Puerto Rico comes from history, from Martí and from our internationalist principles”.
Fidel was not Nicaraguan, but without his help, who knows if the Sandinista revolution would have happened. In 1961 Carlos Fonseca, Germán Pomares and Tomás Borge traveled to Havana, and in Cuba the seed was sown that two years later germinated as the FSLN. But on one occasion, Fidel warned them: “You have to make your own revolution, you cannot imitate ours”. And so it was.
He was neither Soviet, nor Vietnamese, nor Yugoslavian, nor Chinese, but he always understood which side to be on in times of Cold War, against the Empire. And that strategic clarity is one of his most lucid legacies for us in these times of geopolitical reconfiguration.
Fidel was not African, but he became a symbol of post-colonialism, because the wave of decolonization in Africa matched exactly with the definitive independence of Cuba. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans went to Africa to help in that post-colonial period and the most decisive action, undoubtedly, was in Angola. The battle of Cuito Cuanavale liberated three countries, because it put an end to the reaction in Angola and initiated the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa, which in turn determined the independence of Namibia.
He was from nowhere else but Biran… and Santiago, and Havana, and Pinar del Rio, and every corner of Cuba. But Fidel was and is also from humanity.