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From the height of the Alma Mater to the bottom of the stairs, to the lower levels of a wide street, to the bottom of what was a quarry, of stone, of limestone that cracked the skin, a hell of fetters in which they put the child to give up, to swallow his words, his honor, his pride... Until there he was a light, last night.
There beats the memory of the child they took to die, with his ideas, but they forged a man with the idea as the root, and the word and the deed as rays of the same light.
And that same light went there last night, as it goes there every night of January 27th; it made people, youth, history; the same light that became many lights "in the year of its centennial", and that returns every year in new hands, down the stairs, down the street, to the edge of the stone where a child became a man.
For worthy peoples there are circumstances as hard as stones; but if they have men-lights, there is no force or threat or yoke that subdues them....
José Martí is for Cuba a legacy that burns, and the difficult times... a forge.
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