Our Revolution completed the work of our liberators 

A GLORIOUS DAY OF NATIONAL CELEBRATION

But there is one reason that compels us more powerfully than all others: we are Cuban, and being Cuban implies a duty; failing to fulfill it is a crime and an act of treason. We live proudly with the history of our homeland; we learned it in school and have grown up hearing about freedom, justice, and rights. We were taught from an early age to venerate the glorious example of our heroes and martyrs. Céspedes, Agramonte, Maceo, Gómez, and Martí were the first names etched in our minds (…). We were taught that October 10th and February 24th are glorious days of national celebration because they mark the days when Cubans rebelled against the yoke of the infamous tyranny. We were taught to love and defend the beautiful flag with the lone star and to sing every afternoon a hymn whose verses say that to live in chains is to live in shame and disgrace, and that to die for one's country is to live. All this we learned and we will not forget it, even though today in our country men are being murdered and imprisoned for practicing the ideals they were taught from birth. We were born in a free country, a legacy from our parents, and the island will sink into the sea before we consent to be slaves to anyone.

History Will Absolve Me, 1953

FROM DREAM TO REALITY

That is why I said how sad it was to think what our country could have been with the time we have lost. We suffer because of this, but we have hope that the future will be very different, and we have the right to believe that the dreams of those who founded this republic and began the struggle on February 24th, 65 years ago—dreams that we have set out to make a reality—will one day become reality.

Speech of February 24th, 1960

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE

For a date to acquire historical significance, the idea it represents must become a reality. October 10th, February 24th, and all the other dates that mark pivotal moments in our nation's history become reality with the triumph of the Revolution.

Speech of April 19th, 1965

CONTINUITY

For us, October 10th is also a historic date; for us, February 24th, the day José Martí's revolution began, is a historic date; for us, May 20th is not a historic date, because that date reminded us of that false independence, that pseudo-independence imposed on us by the Yankee interventionists with the Platt Amendment and other such things. And for us, the dates that have marked or signified the culminating moments in this revolutionary process are historic dates, because we can all say with satisfaction that our Revolution completed the work of our liberators, and our Revolution swept away all the false symbols, swept away all the false dates, and reclaimed all the true and worthy historical dates of our homeland.

Speech of April 19th, 1965

ARMED STRUGGLE AND THE STRUGGLE OF IDEAS

And what could be more similar to that struggle of ideas of that time than the struggle of ideas today? What could be more similar to José Martí's incessant preaching of a necessary and useful war as the only path to freedom, to Martí's thesis in favor of armed revolutionary struggle, than the arguments that the revolutionary movement in our country had to uphold in the final stage of the process, also confronting electoral groups, political opportunists, and legalistic charlatans, who came to offer the country remedies that for 50 years had been unable to solve a single one of its ills, and stirring up fear of the struggle, fear of the true revolutionary path, which was the path of revolutionary armed struggle?

Speech of October 10th, 1968

JUSTICE

To such injustices, such struggles. To such systems, the uprisings and deaths of the Indigenous people, the epic battles of the enslaved, the heroic struggles of the oppressed, October 10th, February 24th, July 26th.

Speech of July 26th, 1978

A NECESSARY AND USEFUL WAR

He cited the example of our homeland, Cuba, in its final struggle for independence, a struggle organized and led by José Martí, one of the most extraordinary thinkers of our hemisphere, though I'm not sure if he's sufficiently well-known among the countries of Latin America. When he was promoting this final fight for independence, his adversaries argued that it would drench the country in blood, that it would lead to violence. He, however, argued that war was the last resort and spoke of a necessary and useful war, one that had to be swift and well-organized to cause the least possible damage.

Speech on August 13th, 1988, in Quito, Ecuador

YES, IT IS POSSIBLE TO KEEP FIGHTING

This is how our history was written. There were no doctors, no medicine, nothing! And our people fought for ten years, between '68 and '78. And when some, weary, said, "It's no longer possible," Maceo said, "Yes, it is possible to keep fighting, we are ready to keep fighting!" And when some said that the necessary war would never start again, Martí said, "Yes! The necessary war will return." And when the Yankees intervened in this country and imposed the Platt Amendment and a neocolony, our people said, "We will not be a neocolony forever! We will not be dominated forever!" And then came the day, January 1st, 1959.

Speech of November 1st, 1991

PREPARATION

I ask you: If we were in 1895, on that February 24th, and José Martí, in the name of the Revolutionary Party that united all Cubans and all patriots, were to invite you to the second war of liberation, would you say yes or no? (EXCLAMATIONS OF: “Yes!”)

Speech of December 23rd, 1991

UNITING

Consider José Martí's merit, his greatest merit: the war that took place between 1868 and 1878 had just ended, and he was a young intellectual and patriot, a poet, a writer, with pro-independence ideals. And yet, at the age of 25, he began to unite the veterans of the Ten Years' War. There is nothing more difficult in the world than uniting veteran soldiers, especially when the one attempting to unite them is an intellectual who had been in Spain but hadn't fought in the war. And he succeeded in uniting them. What talent and ability! What thought, what resolve! He had a doctrine, he developed the philosophy of independence, and an exceptional humanist perspective. José Martí spoke more than once about hatred: "We harbor no hatred against the Spaniard..."

In an interview for the book One Hundred Hours with Fidel, 2006

PRECURSOR

The first things I read in my adolescence were about the wars of independence and the writings of Martí. I became a supporter of Martí when I began reading his works. Martí foresaw imperialism, because he was the first to speak of imperialism, of its nascent form. He was aware of expansionism, the Mexican-American War, and all other types of warfare, and he was very opposed to and critical of all of it. He was a precursor. Before Lenin, Martí organized a party to make the revolution, the Cuban Revolutionary Party. It wasn't a socialist party, since Cuba was a slave society where a handful of free and patriotic men were fighting for independence. However, he had a very progressive, anti-slavery, pro-independence, and profoundly humanist ideology.

In an interview for the book One Hundred Hours with Fidel, 2006