Author: Pedro Ríoseco | internet@granma.cu
To unite and give coherence to the action of all the revolutionary forces to achieve and defend the independence of the Homeland, José Martí created the Cuban Revolutionary Party on April 10, 1892, whose roots and ideals were taken up again in 1965 by the Communist Party of Cuba, next to celebrate its Eighth Congress.
129 years ago, with his anticipatory vision, Martí proclaimed to the Cuban emigration the need to create an organ that would provide a programmatic line to the new war in preparation, and would give coherence and unity to the dispersed independence efforts under the same action program.
At that time, it was necessary to overcome the main causes, which kept the patriots disunited, and it was urgent to create a political space, where all those who were willing to revolutionary action would come together, without any limitation due to skin color, sex, nationality, social position, criteria on the social order, location inside or outside the homeland, and participation or not in previous contests.
Only through an organization that would unite in its program the interests and characteristics of the different groups of emigrants and the members of Cuban society, would it be possible to create, in the future, a republic without predominance of any social class and of a popular character, with the support of the great majorities, and overcoming the historical fears and preventions.
At the same time, “the management methods should be transformed and the main contradictions between: military and civilians, Cubans living on the island and in exile, veteran patriots and of the new generation, rich and poor, employers and workers, inhabitants of the western and eastern provinces, Cuban and Spanish, black and white.
"Unity of thought, which in no way means the servitude of opinion, is undoubtedly an indispensable condition for the success of any political program," Martí pointed out.
And it is that to channel patriotic thought and action, the Apostle then founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PRC) and was its first Delegate, an effort that represented the maximum expression of his political genius, in which he demonstrated his ability to unite the people and direct it toward the achievement of its highest purposes. Thus he concluded the process that had begun just over three months earlier, when the organization's secret statutes and bases had been approved in Key West, USA
On the occasion of the speech delivered by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz at the mass ceremony by virtue of the closure of the First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), in the Plaza de la Revolución, on December 22, 1975, and In front of more than a million people gathered there, he expressed: “If the Party Congress met there in the Karl Marx, here in the Revolution Square the People's Congress meets to express its support for the Congress agreements. But if we vote there, we must vote here as well. If we discuss and approve all the theses there, here, on behalf of the entire people, we must also vote, and ask our people whether or not they support the agreements of Congress.
"In other words, are we in agreement with the congressional agreements?" Asked Fidel, and the exclamations of "Yes!"
He also asked if anyone was against or abstaining, and likewise the answer, amid applause, was "No!"
Incomparable example of democracy. The theses approved by the Communist Party of Cuba to chart the course of Cuba for future years were approved freely and enthusiastically by the people of the capital and in the provinces, because as Fidel emphasized, «our people feel represented in the party".
“But also - Fidel emphasized in the same Martian method with which the PRC emerged - the most important theses were discussed with the entire people. The people participated in the elaboration of these theses and in the elaboration of the politics of the future years. And that is why he knows that the theses and the agreements of Congress are his theses and they are his agreements! "
The main challenges of then are very similar to the main challenges of today. Then Cuba was fighting against Spanish colonialism and Martí warned in advance of the interest of the nascent US imperialism to take over the Island. Today and for almost six decades, the Cuban people have been able to resist the cruelest economic, commercial and financial blockade in the history of humanity, internationally classified as genocidal, imposed by the governments of the United States since the first years of the triumphant Revolution in the Biggest Antilles, and exacerbated to the extreme, coinciding with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020, with the same interest in asphyxiating the people that Spanish colonialism used with the inhuman reconcentration, decreed by Valeriano Weyler in 1896.
«A new stage of the Revolution begins with this Congress. The road here has not been easy, but we have walked it. The future path will not be easy either, but we will do even better, "said Fidel at the public closing of the First Party Congress.
And now, on the eve of the Eighth Congress of the PCC, the validity of that trust resounds loudly in the ears of the Cuban people, heir to the historical, combative and unitary traditions forged by Martí and Fidel.