“This demonstration is not one of the biggest, but it is one of the most exciting ones,” said the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, to a score of young people who this Wednesday, symbolically, remembered the first torch march that on January 27, 1953, departed from the steps of the University of Havana to the Forge Martiana, led by Fidel and starring the youth of the Centennial Generation, Radio Rebelde publishes.
“The important thing is that it has been carried out”, said Raúl, alluding to the symbolic march of this 2021. “The pandemic will be defeated and the difficulties we face as well”, the Army General said.
Raúl asserted “that is the history of Cuba, that is the history of patriots like Martí, that is the history of our revolutionary students.”
In front of the Martiana Forge, in the midst of the complex epidemiological situation generated by the COVID-19 epidemic, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz and the President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez greeted the boys of the Young Communists League and the University Student Federation that on behalf of the youth of Havana and all of Cuba paid tribute to the National Hero José Martí, a few hours after commemorating the 168th anniversary of his birth.
Also participating in the tribute were the Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party José Ramón Machado Ventura, the Commander of the Revolution Ramiro Valdés Menéndez and José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, three revolutionaries who also starred in the first march, along with Fidel and Raúl, 68 years ago.
In the emblematic Forge, on the site where the quarries of San Lázaro and Martí suffered forced labor during his prison sentence, a wreath was placed before his bust, very close to the flag that he defended and loved.
It was a brief ceremony, but loaded with symbolism, sealed with the close encounter between Cubans of several generations who ratified the continuity of a single Revolution.
The physical distancing imposed by the pandemic did not prevent the affections of this night of January 27, which became a meeting of young people with the living history of the nation, with the common effort to continue enlightening Cuba.