Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Three rebels are captured by the Batista dictatorship's army in the middle of the night on marshy terrain, moments after the landing of the Granma and the temporary defeat of Alegría de Pío. The fatigue on their faces and their threadbare clothes denote the accumulation of several days of wandering. More than once, their captors ask: "Where is Fidel?", seeking any information that might lead them to the whereabouts of the revolutionary leader. And each one answers, despite the anguish of thwarted plans, the recent disaster, the uncertainty of not knowing the fate of their leader, but with the certainty and firmness of someone who believes in the justice of the cause that defend: "I am Fidel!".
The dialogue in this fictional scene, recreated in the cult film "I Am Cuba", a 1964 Cuban-Soviet co-production with a script by Enrique Pineda Barnet and Evgueni Yevtushenko, and directed by Mikhail Kalatozov, would find a kind of real-life version 52 years later at a momentous moment in Cuban history. The same question, this time posed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, received an identical response from the people gathered in José Martí Revolution Square on November 29, 2016, as part of the funeral rites for the Commander-in-Chief of the Cuban Revolution.
Thus, spontaneously, that cry began to emerge, like a telluric force from the depths of the people, especially the youth: "I am Fidel". It was also the answer to those who had hoped for a defeat for the Revolution without Fidel, a declaration of faith by the Cuban people in a time of pain and loss, and a battle cry to continue his work.
The enemy could never defeat Fidel in life, and in the end, defeated so many times, he finally surrendered to the evidence. He then opted for a "biological" solution, waiting for the fall of the Revolution to occur after the death of its historic leader. He failed to calculate how the power of Fidel's example has permeated the hearts of Cubans.
The posterity of great historical figures is almost never simple. Each person appropriates their legacy from their own perspective, and from this, disparate interpretations can emerge. In that sense, the slogan echoed by the people during his funeral -that Fidel spread across millions of voices and souls- could also reflect the complexity of a disputed legacy, in which different interests within the revolutionary camp try to seize his legacy and image at will, in defense of their own agendas. Thus, those who would like to change what shouldn't be changed, as well as those who wouldn't want to change what should be transformed, and not necessarily different groups, could try to use Fidel for their own purposes.
Fidel's performance over more than 50 years at the forefront of a revolutionary process, fraught with obstacles, contradictions, and complexities, amidst highly diverse circumstances and abrupt changes in the international arena, required different emphases and priorities at each moment. His tactical flexibility frequently disconcerted both insiders and outsiders, as he was capable of making sudden shifts, forced by changing circumstances, mostly adverse, that modified or reversed previous policies, but always in accordance with strategic objectives and adhering to unalterable principles. On other occasions, the changes were not due to circumstantial imperatives, but rather to rectification and self-criticism. The superficial observer, or the rigid dogma, could easily get lost in Fidel's extraordinary dialectical capacity and attempt to rely on isolated quotations, taken out of context, to buttress positions that, in reality, have nothing to do with the essence of his thought and praxis. Fidel can never be at the service of bureaucratic and corrupt interests, which only seek to use him for personal gain.
He errs, but he consoles, said Martí, who consoles never errs. And if anything was at the center of Fidel's life, until his last breath, it was his desire to console, to heal, to throw off the chains of human existence, to always fight tirelessly for a full life of dignity, freedom, and justice for all people. Fidel's place remains on the side of those who continue that struggle, in the face of imperialist aggression and against those who would take Cuba back to a past disguised as a future, where inequality and exploitation are normal. In this battle against the dangers of the restoration of capitalism, and for the deepening of the Cuban socialist alternative, Fidel, as Martí said of Bolívar, still has much to do.
Thin favor we would then do to Fidel, and to us, with his deification. He himself wanted to help prevent it before his death by prohibiting the erection of monuments. We cannot allow his thought to become a catechism to be repeated, but a living instrument to dialogue and debate with him, to enrich him and to remain useful in new circumstances. In the words of Fernando Martínez Heredia:
“To benefit from Fidel, we must avoid repeating commonplaces and slogans over and over again. Learning more about the creations and reasons that led him to his victories, the difficulties and setbacks Fidel faced, what he thought about the problems, his concrete actions, can provide us with much, and in this way his legacy will be greater".
The deification of the great ones is a way of condemning their legacy to the most absolute sterility, to uselessness. Turning them into a kind of saint, cornered on an altar to be venerated and flowers placed on them, reduced to the function of justifying and legitimizing what exists, is equivalent to fossilizing them and rendering them harmless, as they do not challenge reality. Fidel's thought must be at the center of the struggle, far from rituals and places of worship. It must serve us to examine with depth and rigor the society we are building, to account for its advances, but also for its contradictions and setbacks. His legacy cannot be used among us as an ornament or endorsement, but rather as a useful tool to advance socialism within the transition.
The best tribute to Fidel is not hollow praise, but an in-depth study of his ideology and praxis, and their weaponization. Only those interested in undermining Fidel's mobilizing and subversive potential to challenge powerful dominant forces within and outside the social and national sphere, and to deepen the work of the Revolution in the face of the enormous obstacles that confront it, would find it appropriate to turn him into an object of worship, a museum, or a liturgical object.
Fidel will always be an ally, a comrade, our leader, in the fight against the weeds that seek to entangle our machetes in the struggles still pending for the achievement of all justice. His survival will forever be in the intellectual authorship of our dreams and projects, our battles and victories. (Text and photo: Cubadebate)
