Fidel in the soul of the Cuban people   |25 November 2021

When at the massive rally in his posthumous homage in 2016, in the Plaza de la Revolución, thousands of voices responded in chorus ‘I am Fidel’! to the question of where he was, they evidenced an unquestionable reality: Fidel Castro Ruz was sown forever in the soul of the Cuban people.

With his leadership he was able to put into practice the Marti's principle of a single party to lead the Revolution in the transition from the Revolutionary Organisations to the Communist Party of Cuba. He was able to unite all sectors of Cuban society.

Although his presence commanded respect, he also radiated affection and everyone wanted to shake his hand or take a picture with him. Those who knew him responded to his call to face any danger, certain that he would be there at the forefront of the battle.

Few people in the world are known by name alone as well as Fidel. Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, was right when he said that Fidel is Fidel and irreplaceable. He was able to foresee during his lifetime the continuity of the revolution first with Raul Castro and then with Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez.

He confronted, with his leadership, the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in the streets through university and popular protests; then he assaulted the Moncada barracks in Santiago de Cuba and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in Bayamo on July 26, 1953; he suffered imprisonment, exile and disembarked on the Granma yacht on December 2, 1956 to wage a hard war of liberation in the mountains and plains of Cuba until achieving the revolutionary triumph on the first day of 1959.

The commander in chief, at the head of his people, faced attacks of all kinds: mercenary invasion, sabotage, threats of a nuclear attack, terrorism and bacteriological terrorism from the United States government against Cuba and led the resistance and victory of the revolution against the cruel economic, commercial, financial and diplomatic blockade of the United States, unprecedented in the world, a policy that qualifies as an action of genocide according to the convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948.

Fidel remained undefeated in all those battles and the attempts of 11 United States presidents to eliminate the revolution, in a colossal feat capable of obtaining the almost unanimous support of the United Nations Organisation in consecutive votes since 1992, in its general assembly on the issue of the blockade.

Fidel led the battle of Playa Giron against the mercenary invasion, implemented the Agrarian Reform and nationalised the American transnational corporations and the sugar mills; he conceived and led the literacy campaign, and guided Cuba through the October Crisis of 1962, where the people were ready to sacrifice themselves in defence of their dignity and independence.

Fidel devised the massive scholarship plan, guaranteed free health and education for all, from primary school to university level, whose degrees are held today by 1.5 million Cubans.

From very early on he saw that Cuba had to be a country of men and women of science and created scientific institutions; he formed the army of white coats, with which Cuba today faces the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Henry Reeve International Contingent, which provided and still provides solidarity aid in many countries of the world.

With his well-known far-reaching vision, he knew how to develop sports as a right of the people and lead our athletes to conquer world and Olympic titles as never before dreamed of in Cuba. He also knew how to unify the creative talent of Cuban intellectuals and artists; he created the Casa de las Américas and the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba and the Union of Journalists of Cuba, in whose congresses he was considered one of their ranks.

Without being an economist, he waged the continental crusade against the unjust payment of the foreign debt, called by him as the eternal debt, in the international meetings on Globalisation and Development, with the most outstanding personalities of the Latin American and world left.

He was the missionary figure of the Cuban Revolution, forerunner of proletarian internationalism, capable of defeating with the Cuban volunteer combatants the South African army and the puppets supported by the United States, ensuring the territorial integrity of Angola, the independence of Namibia and the disappearance of the opprobrious apartheid regime in South Africa itself, bringing to Cuba nothing but the gratitude of the African peoples and the remains of their fallen.

The Non-Aligned Movement had in Fidel an extraordinary promoter of South-South cooperation, as he defended at the United Nations that there can be no peace in the world while millions of people die of hunger or preventable diseases. He also warned early on that the human species is in danger of extinction.

The hatred his figure aroused in US imperialism made him the target of a record 638 assassination attempts by the CIA, all of which were thwarted by the Cuban state security organs.

Together with the leader of Bolivarian Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, in April 2004, Fidel opened the way for Latin American integration by creating, in Havana, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), he inspired the founding in 2011, in Venezuela, of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), as a mechanism of true regional representativeness.

It would not be possible to list Fidel's work without falling into unforgivable omissions. It would suffice to refer to the popular response, after his physical disappearance, as a guarantee of a continuity that will exist as long as there is a grateful Cuban left to carry his flags at any cost.

By Pedro Ríoseco

Cuban newspaper Granma