Ricardo Alarcon: "This is the Revolution that We Dreamed Of"

[magbana]

LA JIRIBILLA
April 18-24, 2009

140th ANNIVERSARY OF THE GUAIMARO CONSTITUTION
“This is the Revolution that we dreamed of”
Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada • Havana

http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2402.html
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 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.

=========================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Los Angeles, California
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"
=========================================

[Peace Patriot]

1. Ah, me, what a tragic tale is that of Thomas Jefferson!

You will recall that tragic heroes are not paragons of virtue and righteousness, but rather noble souls with high ideals who are flawed--who are unable to act on their high ideals, or do the wrong thing, with catastrophic consequences. They are people who want to do the right thing, and seek answers--question themselves, their society--trying to figure out what is right, and who fail, not in understanding, but in action.

That is Jefferson--a man with a towering intellect and a noble soul, who could envision and articulate the most revolutionary statement of human rights in the history of the world--and could not fully implement it in his own life, or in government policy. A man trapped by circumstances, and by the mores of his society, who knew what was right--who could see beyond his era, like no other--yet suffered blind spots, tragic flaws and, in the end, exhaustion. I remember reading one letter of Jefferson, to whom anti-slavers had applied for support, who wearily said that he had already done one revolution; he could not do the next one.

Leftists tend to miss this, about Jefferson--the true meaning of the phrase "tragic hero." It does not mean dead hero--that is, someone who gives his life for a cause, or who is killed because he is right. It is someone who knows what is right, and does both right and wrong--someone with great capacity to be moral and good, and who fails, due to circumstances or inherent character flaws. I prefer this non-ideological view of history. It helps sort out the true monsters and evildoers from the humanly flawed people who advance human understanding and progress, but can't go the distance. There are so many things on which Jefferson was right, and so many things on which Jefferson was wrong. And it is a mistake not to see the whole man, in all of his contradictions and tragic flaws.

Wrong about slavery (and knew it was wrong). Wrong about initiating the seizure of the west from the indigenous (and probably knew it was wrong). Wrong about Cuba (probably did not know it was wrong). Right about free speech, right about freedom from religion, right about freedom from monarchical tyranny, and right about the felicity of self-government. The man who wrote, "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal vigilance against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," was tragically flawed, like we all are. We should look to his life to understand how truly amazing it is when a great soul actually lives up to his or her ideals, in difficult and dangerous circumstances like a revolution.