Cuban revolutionaries today invoke the perseverance of those young men who in July 1953, led by the lawyer Fidel Castro, assaulted two of the main military fortresses, to unleash the struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
By Roberto Morejón
Cuban revolutionaries today invoke the perseverance of those young men who in July 1953, led by the lawyer Fidel Castro, assaulted two of the main military fortresses, to unleash the struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
The actions did not culminate in military success, but after the bloody repression, the young people of the generation of the centenary of the birth of José Martí regrouped forces and outlined objectives, until reaching the national insurrection and triumph.
It is true that the loss of valuable comrades, among the more than 20 thousand Cubans murdered by the tyranny, must have been regretted.
But the memory of those who fell in the struggle is kept alive, even today when Cuba faces another kind of predicament and requires internal unity as well as international solidarity.
When the ideas of the assailants to the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks remain valid, Cubans find reserves of energy to meet the challenges of the present.
Today, Cuba is facing one of the toughest stages of recent times, as the effects of the heavy expenditures during the pandemic caused by the COVID-19 are negatively associated with the opportunistic tightening of the U.S. blockade.
In addition, the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, the West's tension with China and Russia and the consequent spike in energy and food prices and the irregularities in global supply chains are dangerously added to the above.
The U.S. government chose to persist in the economic asphyxiation of Cubans, who today suffer from acute shortages of food, pharmaceuticals and deficits in public transportation.
The government lacks the necessary resources to face a millionaire investment for the maintenance and repair of thermoelectric plants, the vital column of the electric power system.
Amidst supply cuts that will not end immediately, the country is tightening all the possible levers, without abandoning the strategy to achieve a solid local productive system, capable of sustaining the line of local development.
Although resources are scarce, the principle of responding with the greatest social justice remains, as evidenced by the efforts to improve life in vulnerable neighborhoods.
With greater democracy and popular participation, and even in the midst of material hardships, Cubans do not abandon their dearest desires, based on what President Miguel Díaz-Canel often refers to as creative resistance.
