February 24th and the Defeat of the Middlemen

“… preventing the United States from spreading through the Antilles as Cuba gains its independence, and falling, with that additional strength, upon our lands of America. All I have done so far, and all I will do, is for this purpose.”

So said José Martí to Manuel Mercado in an unfinished letter, dated in the Dos Ríos camp. Martí, the most universal of the Cubans, revealed to his “dear friend” his highest objectives shortly before he fell into combat during the war for Cuba’s liberty; a war that he, more than anyone, had contributed to organizing. Obeying Martí’s orders, Cubans took up arms against Spanish colonialism on Feb. 24, 1895.

José Martí was among the few that had experience with U.S. society, the subject of his celebrated North American Scenes. He had patiently labored with a group of Cuban emigrants and challenged the efforts of U.S. authorities to place obstacles before the Cuban revolutionaries. These obstacles included confiscating resources stockpiled for the “necessary war” and led to the sacrifice of the emigrants. Martí’s statements on the U.S. in the document that would become his political testament could not have been more disturbing: “I lived in the monster and I know its entrails.”

See the events of recent days: Cuban-born individuals conspiring with the North American government, accepting its money and carrying out orders to damage Cuba’s image in order of justify the United States’ outrageous policy of aggression. That they would do this so near Feb. 24 is a confirmation of their antipatriotic character.

Sixteen years ago, Feb. 24 was chosen to continue provocations in Cuban aerial space. This decision resulted in shooting down, after numerous warnings, two planes from the US. This incident was solely made possible by the tolerance of North American authorities. It served as a pretext for the Helms-Burton Act, a law that intensified the blockade against Cuba, signed by President Bill Clinton in the heat of his reelection campaign.

Strengthening the blockade to conquer a people through hunger and sickness was not the only effect achieved by the incident provoked by planes from the “Brothers to the Rescue” terrorist organization. The U.S. ruling against five Cubans who sought information to prevent further actions like the series of bomb attacks on Cuban tourist centers in 1997 was farfetched. The judgment included indictments that were not included in the prosecution’s initial charges, and then were filed in order to impose two life sentences on one of the five Cubans, who is now serving the sentence in a North American prison.

Up to today, the United States has refused to submit the military satellite images that allegedly prove that the planes were not shot down in Cuban waters while the prosecutor’s ties to the politics of North America’s dirty war against Cuba are known.

As the Wikileaks cables prove, the U.S. organizes and pays for an “opposition” in Cuba. Their mission is to generate actions, amplified by considerable communication resources, that demonize the Cuban government as a repressive regime in order to justify the blockade and interventionist politics of the U.S. Lies and bribes are the anti-Martí dynamic in which characters are developed to reunite with North American functionaries in Havana and depart to dramatize the scripts written in Washington.

By the grace of the “God money” and its works, common criminals are converted into martyrs for freedom of expression and crooks of the worst kind are exhibited to grand audiences as human rights activists and leaders for Cuba’s future. But these individuals are, in reality, the antitheses of those who went to the redemptive bushland, faced shortages and risked their lives to cry, “¡Viva Cuba libre!” on Feb. 24. These men left comforts and family behind only to witness, after three hard years of war, the United States seizing their victory and denying their entrance into Santiago de Cuba.

Martí, in his letter to Mercado, writes of people who “are satisfied merely that there is a master, Yankee or Spanish, to support them or reward them as great men with positions as middlemen, scornful of the hardworking masses – the country’s mestizos, skilled and inspiring, the intelligent and creative masses of black and white men.”

On Jan. 1, 1959, Mambí soldiers entered Santiago de Cuba under Fidel Castro’s lead, and the United States began its war to recover what it lost on the island. This time, as always, the “hardworking masses” triumphed against the “scornful middlemen.” Our America will not be where the United States falls with “that additional strength.” All Cuba has done so far and all it will do in the future to change and perfect its society is for this purpose.