Global Learning
  • Home
  • Defenders of Cuban Socialism
    • UN Charter
    • Declaration of Human Rights
    • Bandung
    • New International Economic Order
    • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Substack editorial column
  • New Cold War articles
  • Friends of Socialist China articles
  • Global Research articles
  • Counterpunch articles
  • Cuba and the world-system
    • Table of Contents and chapter summaries
    • About the author
    • Endorsements
    • Obtaining your copy
  • Blog ¨The View from the South¨
    • Blog Index
    • Posts in reverse chronological order
  • The Voice of Third World Leaders
    • Asia >
      • Ho Chi Minh
      • Xi Jinping, President of China
    • Africa >
      • Kwame Nkrumah
      • Julius Nyerere
    • Latin America >
      • Fidel Castro
      • Hugo Chávez
      • Raúl Castro >
        • 55th anniversary speech, January 1, 1914
        • Opening Speech, CELAC
        • Address at G-77, June 15, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, July 5, 2014
        • Address to National Assembly, December 20, 2014
        • Speech on Venezuela at ALBA, 3-17-2015
        • Declaration of December 18, 2015 on USA-Cuba relations
        • Speech at ALBA, March 5, 2018
      • Miguel Díaz-Canel >
        • UN address, September 26, 2018
        • 100th annivesary, CP of China
      • Evo Morales >
        • About Evo Morales
        • Address to G-77 plus China, January 8, 2014
        • Address to UN General Assembly, September 24, 2014
      • Rafael Correa >
        • About Rafael Correa
        • Speech at CELAC 1/29/2015
        • Speech at Summit of the Americas 2015
      • Nicolás Maduro
      • Cristina Fernández
      • Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations >
        • Statement at re-opening of Cuban Embassy in USA, June 20, 2015
        • The visit of Barack Obama to Cuba
        • Declaration on parliamentary coup in Brazil, August 31, 2016
        • Declaration of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba on Venezuela, April 13, 2019
      • ALBA >
        • Declaration of ALBA Political Council, May 21, 2019
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 17, 2015
        • Declaration on Venezuela, April 10, 2017
      • Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) >
        • Havana Declaration 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela, March 26
    • Martin Luther King, Jr.
    • International >
      • Peoples’ Summit 2015
      • The Group of 77 >
        • Declaration on a New World Order 2014
        • Declaration on Venezuela 3/26/2015
      • BRICS
      • Non-Aligned Movement
  • Readings
    • Charles McKelvey, Cuba in Global Context
    • Piero Gleijeses, Cuba and Africa
    • Charles McKelvey, Chávez and the Revolution in Venezuela
    • Charles McKelvey, The unfinished agenda of race in USA
    • Charles McKelvey, Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist Revolutionary
  • Recommended Books
  • Contact

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Recommended books on Amazon.com; click on image of book to connect

The Cuban tradition of heroism

8/18/2014

0 Comments

 
Posted September 1, 2014

     In La Edad de Oro, a collection of stories written for children, José Martí wrote, “liberty is the right of all men to be honest, and to think and speak without hypocrisy.” Any person who obeys a bad government or unjust laws is not an honest person.  Many people, he wrote, do not think about what is happening in their surroundings; they are content to live, without asking if they are living honestly.  They are living without dignity (Marti 2006:10). 

      But some persons are not content to live without honesty and dignity.
“When there are many men without dignity, there are always others that have in themselves the dignity of many men.  They are the ones that rebel with terrible force against those that rob the peoples of their liberty and that rob men of their dignity.  In these men walk a thousand men and an entire people; in these men, human dignity is expressed.  These men are sacred” (Martí 2006:11).
     Martí identified three such “heroes,” in whom human dignity and the dignity of the people are expressed.  All were leaders in the independence movements of Latin America in the early decades of the nineteenth century: Bolívar of Venezuela, San Martín of Río de la Plata, and Hidalgo of Mexico.  Martí describes them as men who fought for the right of America to be free, and who protested the enslavement of blacks and the mistreatment of the indigenous peoples.  They read the philosophers of the eighteenth century, observes Martí, and they explained the right of all to be honest and to think and to speak without hypocrisy (Martí 2006:9-16).

     Cintio Vitier maintains that Martí considered truth to be the highest duty of the human being.  Accordingly, he believed that there can be no political liberty without spiritual liberty, and that “the first task of humanity is to reconquer itself,” to know the essence of human life at its roots.  He believed that the impossible is possible, and that it can be attained through truth, honesty, and integrity (Vitier 2006:87-88).

      Martí believed that the world is divided between “those who love and found, and those who hate and destroy” (quoted in Vitier 2006:96).  In this conflict of the world between good and evil, our duty is to stand on the side of the good, through the constant practice of generosity, service, and sacrifice; and through the cultivation of knowledge and the prudent exercise of reason.  And reason must be accompanied by heart, by universal love, which brings us to identify with the weak and the oppressed and to cast our fate with the poor of the earth.  Together, reason and heart provide human redemption (Vitier 2006:96-97).

      Martí profoundly influenced the development of the Cuban revolutionary movement, establishing a fundamental moral perspective.  Thus, Julio Antonio Mella, who founded the Communist Party of Cuba in 1925, would embrace the notion of the need to sacrifice in defense of the great ideals.  “All of the great ideas,” Mella wrote, “have their Nazareth” (quoted in Vitier 2006:132). 

     The central concept of heroic sacrifice in defense of the moral world was kept alive by the intellectual class during the period of cynicism and fatalism of 1934-53 (see “The Republic of Martí lives, hidden” 8/29/2014).  As a result, the idea of heroic sacrifice would be central to the generation of the centenarians, young men and women who emerged as decisive political actors in the aftermath of the March 10, 1952 Batista coup, a young generation that possessed a sense of justice and believed that the world promised by the heroes and martyrs was in their hands to attain.  Fidel emerged as a leader among these young activists, who recognized his exceptional capacities.  He understood the attack on Moncada barracks of July 26, 1953 as a heroic act in defense of noble ideas and in response to the prevailing cynicism that had been created by the neocolonial political-economic system (Vitier 2006:186-90).

     Thus, the new stage of the Cuban Revolution that was launched on July 26, 1953 was understood by those who led it as a collective act of heroic sacrifice in defense of noble ideas, in defense of human dignity and the dignity of the nation, and in the memory of the heroes and martyrs who had come before, whose names they invoked as they established legitimacy in the eyes of the people.  

     Sixty-one years later, on July 26, 2014, the Cuban evening television news program Mesa Redonda was dedicated to the theme of heroism.  One of the panelists was Arsenio García, who was among the 82 members of the expeditionary force that arrived with Fidel on December 2, 1956, to launch the guerrilla struggle.  He maintained that heroes are simply those who do heroic things and carry out heroic acts out of a sense of duty.  They believe it is their duty to do these things, and they do them not for themselves but for others, all of the others who form the people of the nation; and they do them from a sense of love and commitment to noble ideas.  Heroism, Arsenio maintained, is above all self-sacrifice for an ideal. 

     In the sixty-four years since the heroic attack on the Moncada Barracks, the Cuban Revolution has formed a people that believes that there are heroes; a people that defends universal human values with sacrifice; a people that stands as a dignified alternative to the cynicism, skepticism, consumerism, and individualism cultivated by the ideology of the neocolonial world-system.


References


Martí, José.  2009.  La Edad de Oro.  La Habana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación. 

Vitier, Cintio.  2006.  Ese Sol del Mundo Moral.  La Habana: Editorial Félix Varela.


Key words:  Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, Cuban Revolution, neocolonial republic, Martí, heroism
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author: Charles McKelvey

    Retired professor, writer,  and Marxist-Leninist-Fidelist-Chavist revolutionary

    Categories

    All
    American Revolution
    Blog Index
    Bolivia
    Charismatic Leaders
    China
    Critique Of The Left
    Cuban History
    Cuba Today
    Ecuador
    Environment
    French Revolution
    Gay Rights
    Haitian Revolution
    Knowledge
    Latin American History
    Latin American Right
    Latin American Unity
    Marx
    Marxism-Leninism
    Mexican Revolution
    Miscellaneous
    Neocolonialism
    Neoliberalism
    Nicaragua
    North-South Cooperation
    Presidential Elections 2016
    Press
    Public Debate In USA
    Race
    Religion And Revolution
    Revolution
    Russian Revolution
    South-South Cooperation
    Third World
    Trump
    US Ascent
    US Imperialism
    Vanguard
    Venezuela
    Vietnam
    Wallerstein
    Women And Revolution
    World History
    World-System
    World-System Crisis

    Archives

    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    January 2013

    RSS Feed

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

More Ads


website by Sierra Creation