Guáimaro: A Cuban legacy that is defended still

Image via the Album Páginas de Gloria

By Jorge Enrique Jerez Belisario, translated from the Spanish

Imagine the April dust rising in that town in Camagüey. The news from the front was not encouraging: it had been only six months since we had lit the fuse in La Demajagua, and Bayamo had already fallen back into Spanish hands. The military initiative had slowed down. And most critically, there wasn't a single government that represented the emerging Republic.

There were three. Three governments, two flags, a single urgency: unity or death.

That was the landscape on April 10, 1869. Many were missing, and there were numerous differences; yet, the impossible happened. The Mambises not only unified under a single command; they also established the first Constitution of the Republic of Cuba in Arms. That fundamental law, consisting of only 29 articles, was far more than just a document signed amidst the chaos of warfare. It was the founding moment of the Cuban nation—sovereign, with a clear division of powers, a separation between military and civilian authority, and, above all, a revolutionary principle that still resonates today: the abolition of slavery.

Imperfect? Like all human works. But it was ours. Cubans didn’t wait for approval from any metropolis before creating their own laws. With that Magna Carta, Cuba, through its own efforts, joined the community of republican nations in the mid-nineteenth century, standing up against Spanish Empire.

Thus was born, from that Constituent Assembly, the first legitimate government of the Homeland, with Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in the presidency and Manuel de Quesada as General in Chief. Thus was also born the constitutional tradition that, more than a century and a half later, continues to be the soul of our Republic.

These elements also inspired our National Hero, José Martí, to establish the Cuban Revolutionary Party on the same date in April, but in 1892. As the Apostle stated in Patria, this party represents the people and was tasked with organizing the war that would achieve independence and establish a sovereign republic "with all and for the good of all". On these bases were built the foundations of the first Communist Party of Cuba and that of its successor, the vanguard of the Revolution.

Today, when the North tries to sell us the idea that a country without sovereignty can be free, it is worth remembering Guáimaro. There, our founding fathers did not discuss whether it was convenient to have a state of their own. They took it for granted that independence is not begged for, it is built with laws and guns. And that certainty, that faith in the legality of the struggle, flows like an underground river through several of our subsequent constitutions, from that of 1940 to the one that the people endorsed in 2019.

Therefore, when you see the algorithm mercenaries and the peddlers of annexationism selling the rancid idea of surrender, remember the dust of Guáimaro. There, in the plains of Camagüey, a small group of men armed with machetes and dreams left us the greatest gift a people fighting for their freedom could have: their sword transformed into a Constitution. That inheritance is never negotiated, sold, or given away. It is always defended.

This work was translated and shared via a License CC-BY-NC