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Año VII |
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140th ANNIVERSARY OF THE GUAIMARO CONSTITUTION
“This is the Revolution that we dreamed of”
Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada
• Havana
A
CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
Address by comrade Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, President
of the National Assembly of People’s Power, at the
solemn session of the Guaimaro Municipal Assembly on the
140th Anniversary of the Guaimaro Constitution.
People of Camagüey:
Fellow Countrymen:
On April 12 1869, Guaimaro witnessed an unrepeatable
development that has never died and, with its indelible
imprint, continues to live on in the nation's destiny.
Six months before, at the La Demajagua sugar mill,
together with the Revolution, the Fatherland was born
and –since October 10 [1868] — had begun its long quest,
together with other uprisings in the western part of the
country and in Camagüey. These extended the spirit of
rebelliousness to other regions, including the island's
capital. It was not only a movement bent on separating a
colony from its mother country and on creating another
sovereign state. It was really, in the words of Antonio
Maceo, “the war for justice”.
Bayamo, the first important city to be liberated on
October 20, became the seat of a new power that radiated
over a wide area of the valley of the Cauto River.
During one hundred days it made a utopia of equality and
solidarity become real. So strong was its impact on
colonial society, so deep was its meaning, that certain
spokespersons of the annexionist saccharocracy
went as far as contemplating this as the beginning of a
true socialist revolution.
At that stage, Cuban patriots fought in an isolated way
one from the other. They lacked a common organization,
were led by different leaderships and went to their
deaths under two different flags. They were united
solely by their determination to carry out an armed
struggle in order to put an end to colonialism and to
the regime of slavery.
They needed, nevertheless, to define a fighting
program and strategy and also to define who would lead
it. It was a difficult challenge for those men separated
by age, origin and the trajectory of their previous
struggles in different regional and social surroundings.
Most of those who congregated here came to know each
other at Guaimaro for the first time.
They set for themselves, in spite of it everything, a
higher and more complex goal: to organize a state with
its own Constitution, Legislative Assembly, a Government
elected and controlled by the latter, an army, an
administrative apparatus and a judicial system. They
were creating the Republic in Arms, a peculiar,
originally Cuban form of state, with all the attributes,
structures and functions of the most advanced political
systems of those days,. However, it would operate on a
changing territory of varying and sometimes confused
borders, subjected to the dynamics of war vis-à-vis an
incomparably more powerful enemy.
When we were barely taking the first steps in the
struggle to conquer national independence, we Cubans
started, right here, a tradition that would always
accompany our revolutionary movement: internal, free
debate among all patriots in order to achieve a
consensus and unity. We became creators of another legal
order, based on the principles and values of a new
ethics, of which solidarity and justice would be the
supreme norm. We would do this again and again, when we
confronted the worst defeats, when we reinitiated the
struggle. This democratic tradition, this belief in
collective reflection as a support of unity and cohesion
among everyone was born in Guaimaro and would again rise
at Baragua, at Jimaguayu and at La Yaya. No other people
endowed itself in this way with four democratic
Constitutions even before achieving sovereignty and
committed themselves to giving life to them in the
course of over 30 years of laborious quest for freedom.
The revolutionary, radically democratic spirit, a
faithful reflection of the movement initiated at La
Demajagua, was consecrated in the Guaimaro Constitution
with a simple and direct language in its articles 24
(“All inhabitants of the Republic are entirely free.”)
and 26: “The Republic recognizes no dignities, special
honours nor privilege of any kind.” With those words it
liquidated, by a single action, almost four centuries of
slavery and an obtuse and anachronistic feudal regime.
The masses, exploited for such an extended period of
time, were not receiving a present, handed over by some
superior entity. It was clear for everyone that they
themselves were called upon to conquer these aspirations
of justice in a struggle that would necessarily be hard
and protracted. That is why they wrote, in article 25 of
the Constitution: “All the citizens of the Republic are
considered as soldiers of the Liberating Army.”
The Guaimaro Assembly was above all the result of the
amount of patriotism exhibited by those who know how to
debate until overcoming or leaving aside great
differences and to consecrate unity as a vital requisite
of the Cuban National Project. Here, the talent and the
idealism of Ignacio Agramonte –main author of the
Constitution— gleamed. Here, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes
was elected as the first President of out Republic,
Salvador Cisneros Betancourt was designated President of
the Chamber of Representatives, while another
illustrious native of Camagüey, Manuel de Quesada, was
placed at the head of the Liberating Army.
The people came to know and support its Constitution at
the public square, in a democratic festivity that lasted
several weeks and in which the voice of Ana Betancourt
was heard to demand women’s rights. For the emancipation
of women and of her fatherland, she would struggle with
an exemplary continuity to the very end.
Please allow me to pay tribute to another woman native
of Camagüey who also deserves it. She was very young
when, at Guiamaro, she became a part of history with her
slight smile and her silent going about. Here she met
the Father of the Fatherland and loved him passionately,
beyond death itself. She renounced the wealth of her
family, followed him to the battlefield, lost her first
son in the bush, suffered prison and banishment, became
familiar with the most humble chores in her hard and
long exile and died far away from the fatherland. Some
day, the Camagüey and Cuba will at last rescue Ana de
Quesada y Loynaz from oblivion.
The radical, abolitionist, righteous thought, the idea
of full equality for every human being, of the fact they
were all citizens with equal rights and that citizenship
also implies the duty of struggling in favour of the
Revolution, of being soldiers of the Liberating Army,
those ideas that were proclaimed at Guaimaro, would be
the foundations of that Constitution as well as of the
other three Constitutions of the
mambises –the Cubans in arms.
Those
documents reflected the unique drama, drenched in blood
and pain, in which the Cuban nation began to be forged.
We were facing a colonial power that, after having lost
almost the totality of its empire, clung to Cuba, and
concentrated on the island a military force that was of
a superior kind and more numerous than the one it had
deployed throughout the whole continent to confront the
patriots who revolted at the beginning of 19th century.
Cuban patriotism also had to struggle against a powerful
creole oligarchy that owned the sugar plantations and
mills where they kept a sizeable part of the population
in a cruel state of serfdom, while conspiring to prevent
the Island’s independence and to perpetuate the regime
of slavery.
The worst enemy of the Cuban nation operated in
the shadows: the arrogant, ambitious neighbour that had
begun to conceive the idea of seizing Cuba since a very
distant past, shortly after the Thirteen Colonies
managed to detach themselves from England. The men who
came together at this place in order to design the
fatherland to which they were to dedicate so much love
and so many sacrifices could not –nor could they—
know this. They could not know it, but even before they
were born, secret plans were under way in the North to
seize Cuba.
The former Thirteen Colonies had not yet begun their
eastwards expansion; Florida was still a portion of the
Spanish empire, and already President Thomas Jefferson,
in an official document of November 1805, stated his
goal of appropriating Cuba. Then he reiterated his idea
afterwards, in 1807. And again he touched on the same
subject in 1809, in a message addressed to his
successor, James Madison, and insisted on it until 1820.
I repeat this because it must never be forgotten by
Cubans of today nor those of tomorrow. Thomas Jefferson
was the author of the US Declaration of Independence,
one of the most illustrious, educated and endowed with
the most advanced ideas among the founders of that
nation. But with respect to Cuba he was an
annexationist, the very first annexationist. For him,
Cuba was simply a coveted prey, a piece of land that was
easy to conquer and necessary for his country. He passed
away dreaming of the day when US borders were to “reach
the southernmost bounds of our archipelago.”
In those days, neither US imperialism nor any other
imperialism existed, because capitalism had not yet
reached that phase of its development. One could not
even speak at the time of the US in terms of a great
country extending from one ocean to the other. The
Pacific Ocean was very far away at the time, the
Appalachians were barely being crossed, Florida was a
Spanish land, Louisiana was not yet a part of the Union
and the whole West, as far as the ocean, was in the
hands of Spain. But, for Jefferson, it was very
important –a vital matter— to incorporate Cuba to that
country that was barely emerging.
Jefferson, endowed with a great moral and political
authority, convinced many others. It is only thus that
the official US map, published in 1812 can be explained:
a map that provoked Spain’s indignant protest, because
it extended the borders southwards to completely
encompass Cuba.
The men of La Demajagua and of Guaimaro had not yet been
born, and nevertheless the threat of annexation bore
heavily on Cuba.
Inside the White House, either with the President or
with his cabinet members, numerous meetings were held in
1822 and 1823 –and they would continue to be held
afterwards, throughout the entire century— with the
participation of native Cuban agents or others that they
sent to the Island, to discuss the best way to turn Cuba
into a US possession.
The first thing was to maintain Spanish rule in Cuba and
Puerto Rico while waiting for favourable circumstances
for the US to seize both of them. In order to achieve
this, the Yankees exerted pressures on the new American
republics and conspired against Simon Bolivar and his
proposal to the Panama Confederative [Anfictiónico]
Congress concerning the liberation of the Caribbean.
They did not do it secretly. It was openly proclaimed by
President John Quincy Adams in a message to the US
Congress on 15 March 1826 that was supported by this
legislative organ ten days after in an insolent document
in which they went as far as to affirm that: “The Morro
Castle can be considered a fortress on the Mississippi
River’s mouth.”
In order to achieve their purpose, the US exerted strong
pressures in support of Spain vis-à-vis any attempt at
liberating Cuba. This policy was unequivocally presented
by Secretary of State Forsyth in his instructions to his
Chargé d’Affaires in Madrid on July 15 1840, in which
can be read: “You are authorised to assure the Spanish
government that, in case of any attempt, coming from
whatever quarters, to take away from Spain that portion
of its territory, he can in all trust count on the
military and naval resources of the US to assist his
nation either to recover the Island or to maintain it in
their hands.”
This was exactly the line of action adopted by
the US authorities after October 10 [1868] and
throughout the Big War. The Spanish army and its naval
forces always had their full material and logistical
support to combat the Liberation Army, to prevent its
progress to the West, to block Cuban coasts and to
frustrate the expeditions in support of the
revolutionary movement. While giving all these
facilities to the colonialists, Washington viciously
persecuted, threatened and insulted patriotic emigrants
and repressed all attempts to support the rebellion from
US territory. This behavior was denounced
in 1870 by the father of the fatherland, who denounced
that “to seize Cuba” was the “secret” of US policy.
This policy completely contradicted the will and the
sentiments of the people of the US in a very
illustrative contrast with respect to the truly
anti-democratic character of the system of that country.
The President and Congress received countless requests
in favor of extending recognition to the Republic of
Cuba in Arms, to its right to independence and to its
belligerency. It was a claim officially expressed by the
authorities and the legislative organs of several
states; it was requested by all shorts of social
organizations and residents of cities and towns of the
most diverse places of that country in numerous messages
written by tens of thousands of peoples. They were all
ignored by the Yankee oligarchy that in 1898 finally
intervened in our war to steal the people’s victory,
militarily occupy the country and trample on our
Constitution, its institutions and legitimate
authorities.
The
Yankee intervention of 1898 is considered to be the
first imperialist war. But its victim, Cuba, had by that
time accumulated almost a century of resistance
vis-à-vis the voracity of the worst enemy that it ever
had as a nation. Let us always bear this fact in mind.
Let us
also highlight that deceit and lies have accompanied the
anti-Cuban policy throughout history.
Those who
supported the pro-slavery people and colonialists for a
whole century tried to pose as an example of freedoms.
Those who threw themselves on the Island seeking to
frustrate our independence tried to make generations of
Cubans believe that they were free thanks to their
assistance. Those who crushed the democratic
institutions which had their cradle at Guaimaro and
imposed upon us a new serfdom and tyrannies that were
corrupt to the core have arrogated to themselves the
cynical role of purported defenders of a democracy that
was never theirs.
This year we celebrate the 50th Anniversary
of the triumph of the Revolution. The same and only one
that we dreamed of at Guaimaro, the Revolution for which
Ignacio Agramonte gave his noble and generous life.
Since 1959, when we finally conquered independence,
Washington unleashed its wrath against the people that,
after countless sacrifices, had been freed from its
domination.
They imposed an economic war that still lasts –recall
what they wrote in documents of those days that have
already been declassified, about the fact that their
purpose has always been to “cause hunger and despair… to
make the people suffer”—. They launched the mercenary
invasion, promoted terrorism and sabotage, threatened
with direct military aggression and nuclear destruction,
and carry out a colossal enterprise of disinformation
and slander, attempting to cover up their criminal
designs.
Five brothers of ours, each of them totally isolated in
the loneliness of their prisons, suffer, with an
exemplary stoicism, the Empire’s hatred. They are
punished because they sacrificed their youthful years to
defend their people from terrorism. The immense
propaganda and fabrication machinery of Cuba’s enemies
is determined to obliterate their situation with the
silence of an accomplice, and this is the best proof of
their innocence.
Since
March 6 the case of our Five Heroes has accessed a phase
that should give cause for scandal and shame.
On that
day, 12 documents were presented to the US Supreme Court
in support of the request for a re-examination made by
their defence counsellors. Ten Nobel Award winners,
hundreds of parliamentarians, lawyers’ guilds and
associations, representing millions of lawyers,
academic, political and religious personalities from
throughout the world, including some from the US, have
addressed this tribunal demanding justice. Never before
in the history of the US had anything similar occurred,
and it is very difficult for such a universal display of
solidarity to repeat itself. This totally unprecedented
development has been silenced up to now by the big media
that control the information in that country and, with
very few exceptions, the case of the Five is ignored by
US politicians.
Gerardo
Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando
Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez did not commit any crime and
must be immediately freed.
To put an
and now, once and for all, without any condition nor
excuses, the abominable injustice committed against them
is a essential step that the US Government must take if
it wants to make believe that changes that are now
voiced over there are something more than empty
rhetoric.
In an opportunity such as this one, when we pay tribute
to those who initiated the exploit that our history has
been, let us commit ourselves to assure that we and
future generations will be capable of defending the
independence of the fatherland, that we will never allow
ourselves to be divided or fooled by annexionist
intrigues, that we will resist every attempt of
domination, now and always, even after the disappearance
of imperialism.
Long Live Free Cuba
Until victory always
Guaimaro, Camagüey, April 10 2009
*Address by comrade Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, Chairman
of the National Assembly of People’s Power, at the
solemn session of the Guaimaro Municipal Assembly on the
140th Anniversary of the Guaimaro Constitution.
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