GRANMA, Cuba.- Army General Raul Castro, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, and the President of the Councils of State and Ministers of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, presided over at the Demajagua National Park in Granma province, the ceremony for the 150 years of the beginning of the struggles for Cuba´s independence.

More than five thousand inhabitants of this area met this Wednesday in the historic site that preserves the ruins of the sugar mill where Carlos Manuel de Cespedes gave freedom to his slaves and called to fight for the emancipation of the homeland.

The placement of a floral offering and the shooting of 21 battery saves preceded the cultural moment in which dancers and actors recalled the Cespedes´ Republican Anthem and fragments of the Manifesto of October 10.

Codanza Company danced the choreography titled Cespedes´s uprising in his Demajagua sugar mill and Los Caminantes Trio sang The Mambi by Luis Casas Romero.

Where the Cuban Revolution Was Born

We come to ask permission to History to enter one of its sacred precincts, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in the ceremony for the 150 years of the uprising of Demajagua.

Accompanied by Raul Castro, the Cuban President recalled that in that site Carlos Manuel de Cespedes raised against the metropolis the soul of a new-born people, forever undermining the bases of a slave society.

The Cuban Revolution was born here 150 years ago, and a century later Fidel marked his unique character, Diaz-Canel underlined and then explained the contribution of the Commander-in-Chief in understanding Cespedes´s actions.

The Cuban President said at the same site of the uprising that the reflections of a passionate of History as Fidel were then an invitation to revisit the dramatic course of the process started a century earlier.

Patriotism and Morals: Always Weapons

The history of our people in these hundred years confirms the axiomatic truth that if to fight we wait to meet the ideal conditions then the fight would never have begun, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel pointed out when remembering Fidel Castro´s words on October 10, 1968.

In the ceremony for the 150 years of the independence movement, Diaz-Canel said that faced with the challenges of current Cuba, condemned by the American blockade, it is imperative to retake that analysis of the Commander-in-Chief.

We know it is possible to win from scratch without more weapons than morals and patriotism, the Cuban President highlighted, and added that struggle under the worst circumstances has made us what we are: a sovereign nation, and proud of its history.

We are Cuba, the President said, quoting to summon the bravest of the warriors and Mestizos.

Protecting Cespedes´s Humanist Legacy

President Miguel Diaz-Canel emphasized that it is more fair and necessary the persistent demand of Army General Raul Castro to protect and stimulate that humanist legacy of Cespedes, who put black men next to white men and not behind, not at their services but as their equals.

He called them citizens immediately without making distinctions, Diaz-Canel emphasized in the national ceremony in Demajagua for the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the struggles for independence.

He added that as a heir to that first law, which even without writing already dignify the human being in the midst of the manigua, our National Assembly takes today and must always bear the colors that made Cuba invincible.

Blacks, Mulattos and mestizos are as necessary in the country of our future as they gave glory to the country of our honored past, the Cuban President declared.

Unity to Continue Fighting

The breakdown of unity was always the root cause of setbacks and reversals, Diaz-Canel asserted in the ceremony for the anniversary 150 of the beginning of our independence struggles, which Raul attended.

After remembering that a century later the historical generation was born, that never departed from its commitment to the most humble, he emphasized that the youngest children of the homeland will not surrender, we will not renounce and never give up.

Diaz-Canel evoked Fidel ´s words in the centenary of the uprising, when he said that this people, as they have fought a hundred years for its destiny, are able to fight another hundred years for that same destiny.

The Cuban President concluded his speech with a vibrant sentence by proclaiming that we have fought 150 years and will continue to fight
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