Very early in the morning of the day October 10th 1868, with a view of the Gulf Guacanayabo and high mountains hard to reach with the eyes in the East of Demajagua, the lawyer Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y López del Castillo brought together that top quality and hardworking troop that had sworn loyalty previously at the meeting held at the Estate San Miguel del Rompe, beyond the River Jobabo. They had agreed to support the first who was decided to fight for the independence.
That secret call held under the Masonic oath and secrecy with the enigmatic name of Tirzán Convention (Convención de Tirzán), would be the last time the crucial act was extended. In the middle of a bunch of men and slaves that would be redeemed, the initiator read the manifesto that conserved the sovereignty determination:
When a nation reaches the extreme degradation and misery in which we see each other, no one can censure him for using weapons to get out of a state so full of reproach. The example of the greatest nations authorizes that last alternative. The island of Cuba cannot be dispossessed of the rights enjoyed by other peoples, and cannot permit saying that it knows nothing but suffering. The other civilized peoples have to make use of their influence to get an innocent, progressive, sensitive and generous people out of the claw of an oppressive barbarian.
His flag, which for the first time flew that day, sewn by the young resident Candelaria Acosta, would accompany him to the Congregation of Guáimaro. There, by agreement of all, it would become a treasure of the nation and would be placed forever wherever they met and under any circumstances, a Cuban assembly. In order not to exacerbate this precedence, they agreed to associate it with the equilateral triangle and the solitary star that had identical colors: red, blue and white, as the precursors had been designed and then became the flag of Cuba.
Céspedes would be not only the brave main protagonist of October 10. In the coming years, countless sacrifices and hard facts would be presented to him as a vertiginous succession that necessarily happens in complex moments:
- The commotion in the town of Yara that would give name to the Revolution initiated in the yard of the Sugar Residence.
- His determination to move forward when, in the middle of the confusion, only 12 men stayed
- Taking the Bayamo City, the first capital of the Revolution, its unsuccessful defense, its attitude towards the Assembly and its agreement with the majority criteria according to which the president of the Republic in Arms should submit to a legislative assembly.
José Martí, Cuban outstanding intellectual, made the accurate analysis of that democratic utopia by recognizing that Céspedes did not believe in a divided authority because «the unity of command was the recovery of the revolution; that the diversity of bosses, instead of accelerating, stuck decisions and actions. He had a quick, unique end: the independence of the country. The other people had another: what the country will be after independence. Both were right; but at the time of the fight, the others had it as a second priority. Engaged in his goal, he rejected who stopped him »¹.
- The drawbacks of his uncertain government, the severity of the war unleashed in all its magnitude.
- The sacrifice of his beloved son Oscar captured by the enemy and at the offer of his life in exchange for his ideas, which he responded: «Oscar is not my only child; I am the father of all Cubans who have died for the Revolution». And thus, the Father of the Homeland is born.
- Pandora’s Box opened; his deposition took place by a legal act disregarded of the transcendental nature of his life, work and leadership. Today it would be questionable under the principle that the only source of law is the Revolution itself.
- His excellent attitude in life, through the mountains until arriving at an unknown place called San Lorenzo, where in February 27, 1874 he fell serenely without renouncing one of his principles.
The formation of the unity of the nation has been an epic act that can never be ignored or diminished in its vital sense. What a high price was paid for lack of unity or for trying to anticipate political events! This is how Marti felt with controlled emotion when he praised Céspedes and Agramonte:
From Céspedes, the impetus, and from Agramonte the virtue. The first is like the volcano, which comes, tremendous and imperfect, from the bowels of the earth; and the other is like the blue space that crowns it. From Céspedes, the explosion, from Agramonte, the purification. The first challenges with authority as king; and with force as of the light, the other wins... It will still be at the start of the first and in the dignity of the other, a matter for the epic.
President Céspedes was deposed from his magistracy in a camp that had the paradoxical name of Bijagual de Jiguaní. Another thing was not that place, a bibijagüero where the heroes of homeland break the moral order trying to defend the constitutional.
The victorious Revolution in January 1, 1959, in its profound action determined that the agonizing site was covered by an immense lake, a purifying lake named after Carlos Manuel de Céspedes. That was Fidel's determination!
What great power symbols have and what redemptive role does poetry have to help us, without losing a moment of objectivity, to understand historical facts! Before history you can only enter with your head uncovered.
Poor are the rationalists, those who want to be more Jacobin than those of the French revolution! From rebellion, secrecy and exile people still can only dreamed. Only from political power can society and history be transformed. Once you have it, you acquire immense responsibility.
The spirit of the revolutionary people cannot be shipwrecked in the dead waters of the bureaucracy, the harmful brake to the energetic and liberating movement that allows every process to observe an original dialectic: listen and take an example of other experiences but assume the uniqueness of its own.
October 10, 1868 was necessary as it was February 24, 1895 and January 1, 1959. The vision of the Revolution as one, as a secular future, gives us determination of the sense that the Revolution is not a fuss or a chaos, or a non-sense movement, but something deeper and more serious.
This was seen by Céspedes in the maturity of his thought and in his memorable speech when he was proclaimed president of the Republic in Arms in April 11, 1869, when "in the act of engaging in his struggle against the oppressor" as a commitment to his «own conscience» swore: «Cubans: I count on your heroism to consummate independence, with your virtue to consolidate the Republic. Count on my loyalty».
Notes:
1- En Martí, José. “Carlos Manuel de Céspedes”. En La revolución de 1868. Centenario 1868. Instituto Cubano del Libro, La Habana, 1968, pp. 197-198.
2- Martí, José. Obras Completas. Tomo 4. Editorial Ciencias Sociales. La Habana 1975, p. 359.
Taken from the digital site of the Historian of the City of Havana
By Radio Station Cadena Habana
Translated by Susel Esquivel
