Some participants still remember that powerful demonstration that took place on September 2, 1960, when around one million Cubans, gathered in José Martí Revolution Square, approved the First Declaration of Havana, read by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz.
It was “a true human sea,” as Fidel said, at a historic moment in which the will to defend national sovereignty and the beginning of an independent and defiant foreign policy in the face of threats from the Yankee government were reaffirmed.
Men and women had responded to the call of the Revolution and formed the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba. No maneuvers promoted by the enemy influenced the consecrated sons of the Homeland.
Months earlier, the United States had canceled the purchase of Cuban sugar, aiming to plunge the country into misery. The revolutionary government’s response was immediate: the Yankee companies existing in Cuba were nationalized.
The First Declaration of Havana represented the response to the outrageous Declaration of San José, the result of the meeting held from August 22 to 29, 1960, in Costa Rica, by the Organization of American States (OAS), which sought to threaten Cuba for its relations with the Soviet Union.
There, Raúl Roa García, Foreign Minister of Dignity, strongly denounced the attacks and maneuvers of the great power and other countries against Cuba.
The Cubans condemned in all its terms “the so-called Declaration of San José of Costa Rica, a document dictated by North American imperialism and an attack on national self-determination, the sovereignty, and the dignity of the brotherly peoples of the Continent.”
The document was categorical. It rejected the open and criminal intervention that North American imperialism has exercised over all the peoples of Latin America for more than a century, as well as the attempt to preserve the Monroe Doctrine.
Faithful to the history of the continent, it proclaimed the Latin Americanism championed by José Martí and Benito Juárez, while extending friendship to the North American people.
It declared that the aid offered by the Soviet Union in the event that the nation was attacked by imperialist military forces could not be considered an act of interference, but rather constituted a clear act of solidarity.
It also advocated “the duty of workers, peasants, students, intellectuals, Black people, Indigenous people, youth, women, and the elderly to fight for their economic, political, and social demands.”
The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba reaffirmed its faith that “Latin America would soon march forward, united and victorious, free from the shackles that turn its economies into wealth alienated from North American imperialism.”
In this sense, it ratified the decision to work “for that common Latin American destiny that will allow our countries to build true solidarity, based on the free will of each of them and the shared aspirations of all.”
The truth contained in the Declaration of Havana was supported by the entire crowd, who for several minutes exclaimed: “We already voted with Fidel!” Then, the Commander in Chief declared: “And now, something is missing. And with the Declaration of San José, what do we do?” And to the cries of “We tear it up!”, Fidel tore it up.
Sixty-five years after that historic event, it’s worth recalling the words expressed on that occasion by leader Fidel Castro Ruz: “Cuba will not fail. Here we are today, Cuba, to reaffirm, before Latin America and the world, as a historic commitment, its inalienable dilemma: Homeland or Death!”
[ SOURCE: PRENSA LATINA ]
