April’s Creation

When reading the book, “One of Those April Days” by Pedro Conde Sturla, I realized with great emotion that we are talking about the most important historical event of the 20th century in our country.

Every detail and every description of what happened during the 1965 insurrection tells us that our people, in those months that “shook the world,” were starring in the second popular democratic revolution of the Western Hemisphere, preceded by the one in Cuba.

It was something that the Colossus of the North decided to not allow, instead implementing an unprecedented counterrevolution, setting the world’s most powerful army against a village of a few million habitants on a small and beautiful Caribbean island.

I emphasize that it was unprecedented, because previous U.S. military interventions had the impression of an emerging expansionist imperialism, and not a counter revolutionist determination to obstruct a popular victory.

As formidable as our collective feat was — Pedro describes 42,000 marines armed like Rambo and Robocop, accompanied by numerous planes, tanks and battleships — it could not take a few blocks defended by 7,000 fighters, even poorly armed and nourished.

It did, however, “imprison” this wonderful island for decades, disturbing the peace, torturing, terrorizing, demeaning, alienating, drugging, impoverishing, co-opting, controlling, dividing, and dispersing the forces sustaining that heroic creation.

Half a century after that crime against humanity, the United States and all of the capitalist world systems suffered the worst crisis in its history. Their local instruments of domination, while still prominent, present symptoms of decay, while the ideals of that magnificent April rise on every continent, especially in our rebellious America.

It’s great that Pedro Conde recreates his rebellious adolescence and tells young people that it was possible to enter the palace defiantly, building strength like Ozama [Fortress], and winning battles such as the Duarte Bridge while extolling the value of disobedience and insubordination, which are so necessary today in front of this corrupt pseudo-democracy.

But it would be even better if Pedro and all who embrace that unfinished revolution from its undeniable renewed relevance were to summon the youth to a new heroic creation, expressing that it’s not too late to storm heaven and to do away with the mafias and absurdness that occupy their palaces.