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Cuban President Raul Castro presided over the ceremony for the Day of the National Rebellion, in Artemisa province, southwest from Havana.
Artemisa province won the celebration for the 61st anniversary of the attacks to Moncada Garrison in Santiago de Cuba and Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Garrison in Bayamo in eastern Cuba.
Cuban deputy president Ramiro Valdes addressed the audience with the keynote speech. He was one of the attackers of Moncada Garrison on July 26, 1953 in the centenarian birthday of the national Hero Jose Marti. This action started the armed struggle against Fulgencio Batista dictatorship that concluded over with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1st, 1959.
Ramiro Valdes, in his historical speech stressed that the heroic pages written by the Cuban sons in other countries abroad, are the result of the respect and admiration devoted worldwide to this humble people. Cuban blood has fertilized African and American lands for their independence and the end of Apartheid in South Africa. Teachers, health workers, builders, sport trainers, cultural promoters, and others, Cubans educated as internationalists by the Revolution, have generously contributed from the Himalayas Mountains to the Amazonian jungles because they share the concept that Homeland is humanity.
The centenarian generation, as they were used to be called, followed Marti’s thoughts when he said: “…the real man does not see which the best side to live in is, but in which one is the duty to fulfill.”
This is the same principle followed by our Cuban Five antiterrorist fighters, three of them are still held in the United States serving unjust sentences. We should not stop demanding their return to the Homeland.
