Cuba evokes today and every day the emancipatory and supportive legacy of the historic leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, who is about to celebrate the 97th anniversary of his birth on August 13.
His imprint continues to mark, seven years after his death, the country's efforts to consolidate its sovereignty and independence, and the permanent improvement of the socialist system, in the face of hostility from the United States, and the intensification of the blockade imposed by that power since more than 60 years ago.
When he entered Havana on January 8, 1959, leading the rebel forces that defeated the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista (1952-1959), Fidel Castro was already a living legend, and since then he has become a paradigm of a Latin American and world revolutionary. .
His political sagacity, prestige, and solidarity, Latin American and Third World vocation, allowed him to lead the Cuban resistance against the most powerful empire in history for almost five decades, and to place himself at the center of the events that marked the world in the last century.
He personally led, among other military and political battles, the victory of the Cuban people over the mercenary aggression at Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs, 1961), and his prestige grew in 1962, during the October Crisis, or Missile Crisis, when , according to the Argentine-Cuban guerrilla Ernesto Che Guevara, shone like a statesman rarely did.
His contributions to the strengthening of leftist forces in Latin America and the rest of the planet, his contribution to the anti-colonialist struggles in Africa, to the defeat of Apartheid in South Africa, and to the unity of the nations of the so-called Third World, among others, are also recognized. redemptive causes that marked the 20th century.
According to Abdelaziz Bouteflika, president of Algeria from 1999 to 2019, Fidel possessed the rare ability to travel to the future, to later recount it, and - he stated - "will undoubtedly have the merit of being included in the pantheon of few men who were at the same time forerunners and dynamic actors who designed the course of our world”.
For his brother by blood, weapons and ideals, Army General Raúl Castro, Fidel was the most distinguished son of Cuba in the 20th century, “the one who showed us that it was possible to attempt the conquest of the Moncada Garrison; that it was possible to turn that setback into victory”.
That is the undefeated Fidel who continues to summon the Cubans with his example and with the demonstration that any obstacle, threat or turbulence can and will be overcome in our firm commitment to build socialism in Cuba, or what is the same. , guarantee the independence and sovereignty of the homeland, he said on that occasion.