Leónidas, Esparta, Abdala and Martí.
(Taken from the Facebook of Oriol Marrero, Councilor Cuban embassy in Greece)
The resistance and heroism of the Greek combatants in the battle of Thermopylae ("Hot Gates") in the Kalídromo mountain massif, in 480 BC (Second Medical War), and particularly the role played in it by the hero and King Leónidas, of Sparta, powerfully attracted the attention of the Cuban National Hero José Martí, who identified this historical event as a reference point for Cuba's struggles for its national independence.
For Martí there was an independent, libertarian and epic common thread between the struggles of Greece and the struggles of Cuba. This thought was expressed, at least, in his speech of November 30, 1889 in Harmann Hall in New York, where he would evoke the example of the battle in the Thermopylae Gorge, and of Leonidas, for the independence struggles from Cuba. That day he referred to a “Greece itself resurrecting”, and to a “Cuba, as beautiful as Greece”. And he said of Cuba that, "on land he will fight, as long as there is a foot of land, and when there is not, he will still fight, standing in the sea", because "Leonidas from Thermopylae, from Rome Cato, point the way to the Cubans ”.
Many years before, in 1869, in the essential for the history and future of Cuba dramatic poem Abdala, Martí had evoked: "and let Nubia fight as Sparta fought"; and “tell the tyrant that in Nubia / There is a hero for twenty of his spears: / That the air dares to become master: / That the fire is needed in the homes: / That the land be is bought with his blood: / That the water has to mix with his tears /.
This epic, poetic and dramatic expression by Martí somehow recalls the ultimatum that King Leonidas had received, in 480 BC, from the Persians in the Thermopylae Gorge, to unconditionally hand over his weapons. , and "air, fire, earth and water." And it is precisely when the historic response of the Spartan king Leonidas to the powerful Persian enemy occurs, a response that would lead to a historical weapon in itself, and an iconic phrase in the ancient and current history of the struggles of the people of Greece for their independence. and sovereignty.
Faced with the demand for surrender, the delivery of "air, fire, land and water", and weapons by the powerful Persian king Xerxes I, the Spartan king Leonidas would have responded: "Come and take them"! The historic, famous and epic cry - in ancient Greek language - of, “Molón lavé”!
When the 2 501 years of the momentous battle of Thermopylae and the heroic resistance of the Greeks under the command of Leonidas, against the powerful and millennial invading Persian armies commanded by Xerxes I, are fulfilled just this month and in these days, It is not idle to reread the work Abdala, written by the 15-year-old Cuban teenager José Martí, published in Havana on January 23, 1869, in the only issue of his small newspaper La Patria Libre (The Free Homeland), printed in the printing press and bookstore “El Iris ”, Bishop 20 and 22, in some of whose verses the Apostle would exclaim:
SCENE I
ABDALA, A SENATOR and COUNSELORS
SENATOR
Illustrious Warrior: Calm Your Enthusiasm!
From stranger to shameless arrogance
The people gave them the laurel they deserved
Such foolish presumption and such audacity;
But today are not their barbaric offenses
Signs of pride and simple threats:
He's already stopping the Nubians in the field!
Already at our doors he places guards for us!
ABDALA
What do you say, Senator?
SENATOR
"I'm telling you oh, chief
From the Nubian army! that you throw them
They must shine, in the open air
The sacred flag of the homeland! -
I tell you that Nubia must
From the oppressor the tongue tears out bold,
And the plain with its blood bathe
And Nubia fought as Sparta fought! -
I come in your hands to leave the company
To avenge the cowardly threats
Of the barbarian tyrant who thus arrives
To strip our souls of life!
I come to beg the struggling Nubian
Let him go to battle with the people ”.
SCENE VIII
ESPIRTA, mother of Abdala. ELMIRA, sister. ABDALA. A SENATOR. COUNSELORS. SOLDIERS.
Warriors enter carrying Abdala, wounded
ELMIRA AND ESPIRTA (Scared). Abdala!
(The warriors lead Abdala to the middle of the stage.)
ESP. Don't cry, you tell me? And your life
Will the country ever pay me?
ABD. The life of the nobles, my mother,
It is fighting and dying to abide by it,
And if necessary, with its own steel
Rip, to save her, the entrails!
But ... I feel like dying: in my agony
(To all :) do not come to disturb my sad calm
Silence! ... I want to hear ... oh! It seems to me
Let the enemy host, defeated,
She flees across the plain ... Hey! ... Silence!
I already watch them run ... the cowards
The brave warriors pounce ...
Nubia won! I die happy: death
It matters little to me, because I managed to save her ...
Oh how sweet it is to die when it be died
Fighting boldly to defend the homeland!
(He falls into the arms of the warriors.)
Abdala would be perhaps in at least a decade the most significant work written by Martí with references to Greece, but not the only one. In his Fragments and Poems in Preparation, although the exact date of them does not appear, he would also exalt the struggles of Leónidas, as he would do in the poem Orilla de Palmeras, (Shoreline of Palm trees), where he again evoked the historical and referential role of Sparta and Leónidas, by exclaiming : "Among so many Spartans, one Leonidas: One Leonidas in each one Spartan." In general, he would mention the Spartan hero Leonidas about seven times, always directly in his works.
For this reason, with the National Hero and with Cuba in the heart, when 25 centuries and a year have passed since the Battle of Thermopylae, a group of compatriots has visited the statue of Leonidas in Sparta, and in a simple but heartfelt gesture, full of love towards the brother people of Greece and its history of struggles, has accompanied the hero of the Thermopylae Gorge with the flag of the lone star, the same flag for which José Martí gave his life, fighting for the national sovereignty of Cuba , thousands of kilometers away from Thermopylae, facing another occupying foreign power.
If the famous battle of Thermopylae lasted seven days, and of them there were battles for three, 2,501 years after that heroic Greek resistance, the historical resistance of the Cuban people against the new empires awakens in the world equal admiration and solidarity for now 62 years. As much as in the Gorge of Thermopylae in the 5th century BC, and as much as in the heroic resistance before the bloody and thirsty fences to the holy city of Missolonghi, in the first third of the 19th century.
Martí saw those links between the struggles of Cuba and Greece! He described them. They are in his literary works, in his poetry, in his brilliant journalistic works. But more than that, Martí was aware and knew how to bequeath, first of all with his life, that there are no forces and no Effialtes capable of twisting the right ideas towards the path of Anopia.
