Comrades.
Dear friends:
Today we gather here not only to remember a date. We are here because 58 years ago, the Empire believed it could kill an idea in a little school in La Higuera. And it failed.
From history, Che asks us what we are doing for humanity.
Che's answer, forged in indissoluble union with Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro, will always be action. That unwavering loyalty and shared ethic between the visionary and the executor is the model we must follow. His legacy will not die if it is present in each of our actions.
Today, we are faced with a struggle in which we are all involved: ending the criminal economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba. This criminal policy is not a policy of disagreement; it is an act of economic warfare, the main impediment to our full development and a flagrant violation of international law.
Faced with this reality, Che's internationalism is our antidote. His rejection of imperialism and his ethic of sacrifice remind us that solidarity is not a feeling, it is the fundamental trench.
Therefore, honoring Che requires moving from memory to mobilization and looking to the future with optimism.
As the Commander-in-Chief said: “That is why we must look firmly and decisively to the future; that is why we must look to the future with optimism. And we will always seek inspiration in Che's example, inspiration in struggle, inspiration in tenacity, inspiration in intransigence in the face of the enemy, and inspiration in internationalist sentiment!”
After this ceremony, after this tribute to Che, we all commit ourselves to always holding high, ever higher, the revolutionary flags and the principles of solidarity.
In these moments of remembrance, let us raise our thoughts and, with optimism for the future, with absolute optimism for the definitive victory of the peoples, let us say to Che, and with him to the heroes who fought and fell alongside him:
Hasta la victoria siempre!