“Comrades workers, this is a socialist and democratic Revolution of the humble, with the humble and for the humble. And for this revolution (…), we are ready to give our lives”.
Such were the words of Fidel, that April 16, 1961 before a people deeply hurt and outraged by the imperialist aggression they had just suffered. He did not declaim a slogan, the next day he would come out first to face the invasion by Playa Girón, in which imperialism was caused a legendary defeat. The people were literally giving their lives.
There are those who say that these are not times of slogans, and they are right. The history that we have lived up to here does not fit in a slogan. The way we have resisted, without surrendering the sovereignty of the nation, the systematic violence of one of the strongest centers of capitalist power in history does not fit into a slogan.
There is no room in a slogan for the sharpness and determination necessary to carry out the changes demanded by the present, the honesty with which we must face our limitations in a self-critical way, nor the strength and conviction with which it is required to work to build the country we want.
The day that the socialist character of the Revolution was declared, we had just defeated a dictatorship. Without a system that would break the domination structures of capitalism and end all forms of exploitation, the bourgeois legal-political apparatus, despite being republican, would continue to be functional to the elites to the detriment of the humble. The Revolution did not betray the people who brought it to power.
60 years have passed since that historic day. The contemporary Cuban context is another. We approved a Constitution in which the irrevocable nature of socialism in Cuba is recognized. However, the collective pact for the continuity of our socialism we have to update it day by day.
Today the challenges are different: moving forward with the changes that were approved and moving the economy forward; an economy under siege, of course, but one that we need to progress. It is necessary to be clear that no economic change is just a technicality; it is a process of complex political, social, subjective and cultural implications.
How to achieve convergence between the required economic transformations and the deepening of justice, equity and democracy in our country? Abandoning the path of socialism, it would not be possible.
Ours seems like a foolish bet in a region in which neoliberalism has advanced so much. But precisely, because of that need for another possible world, our folly makes sense. We are not capriciously defending a delusion; we are trying to carry out the best alternative, because we are aware of the historical moment that we are living and the geopolitical enclave in which we are stranded.
On a day like today, as if I were among the multitude of those people gathered in a fight on April 16, 1961, I say: We will win! Although our challenges are different, here we are. And it is not a slogan! Really, here we are!
