- Day 1
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They tell us, these tyrants, that they adore a God of peace and equality, and yet they usurp our land and make us their slaves. They speak to us of an immortal soul and of their eternal rewards and punishments, and yet they rob our belongings, seduce our women, violate our daughters. |
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Taíno chief Hatuey who rebelled against Spanish rule before being tied to the stake and burnt alive at Yara, 1512. (online).
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- Day 2
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I am in daily danger of giving my life for my country and duty, for I understand that duty and have the courage to carry it out-the duty of preventing the United States from spreading through the Antilles as Cuba gains its independence, and from overpowering with that additional strength our lands of America. I have lived in the monster and I know its entrails; my sling is David's." |
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José Martí writing about possible annexation by the United States before the Spanish–American War, 1895. (online).
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- Day 3
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Hundreds of Cubans have given their lives, literally, in a struggle that was, first and foremost, not theirs but ours. As Southern Africans we salute them. We vow never to forget this unparalleled example of selfless internationalism. |
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Nelson Mandela speaking of Cuba's participation in the Angolan Civil War fighting against South African forces, 1995. (online).
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- Day 4
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To be Cuban is to go with Cuba everywhere. Cuba is a paradise from which we flee by trying to return. |
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Exiled Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante.
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- Day 5
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May Cuba with all its magnificent potential open itself up to the world and may the world open itself up to Cuba so that this people which is looking for the truth which is working to progress and which longs for comfort and peace may look to the future with hope. |
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Pope John Paul II upon his arrival in Cuba at Havana's Jose Marti International Airport, January 21, 1998.
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- Day 6
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There are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation; and if an apple severed by the tempest from its native tree cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with Spain, and incapable of self support, can gravitate only towards the North American Union, which by the same law of nature cannot cast her off from its bosom. |
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U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, 1824.
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- Day 7
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Music is a treasure hunt. You dig and dig and sometimes you find something. In Cuba, the music flows like a river |
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American guitarist Ry Cooder on his experiences working Cuban musicians on the Buena Vista Social Club.
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- Day 8
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I believe that writers, unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite, are at heart people who live by night, a little bit outside society, moving between delinquency and conformity. |
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Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante.
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- Day 9
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I am Cuba. My sugar was carried away in ships but my tears were left behind. |
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Narrator Raquel Revuelta in the 1964 film I am Cuba.
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- Day 10
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Let's go, ardent prophet of the dawn, along remote and unmarked paths, to liberate the green caiman you so love... |
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Opening lines of Che Guevara's Canto to Fidel. A poem Guevara presented to Fidel Castro on board the Granma yacht, shortly before arriving in Cuba to foment the Cuban Revolution. The green caiman was a metaphor for the reptilian shaped island of Cuba.
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- Day 11
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Ay, no ha que llorar, que la vida es un carnaval!
es mas bello vivir cantando.
Ay, there's no need to cry, because life is a carnival!
It's more beautiful to live singing. |
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From La Vida Es Un Carnaval by Victor Daniel
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- Day 12
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We are satisfied that each and every one of us has fulfilled our duty to our nation. |
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Economist Marta Beatriz Roque after organizing the Assembly for the Promotion of Civil Society in Cuba, a rally calling for political change on the island.
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- Day 13
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For what is the story of [Latin] America if not a chronicle of the marvellous in the real. |
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Cuban writer, Alejo Carpentier.
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- Day 14
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Here the chief urgency is negroes ... We pray license for each citizen to bring four Negroes and Negresses, free of all duty |
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Spanish settlers' urgent appeal to the authorities in Santiago de Cuba for more slaves, 1542.
Hubert H. S. Aimes: A History of Slavery in Cuba, 1511 to 1868 p.11
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- Day 15
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I sympathise with the rebellion, but not with the rebels. It may be that as the pages of history are turned, brighter futures and better times will come to Cuba. It may be that future years will see the island as it would be now, had England never lost it – a Cuba free and prosperous under just laws and a patriotic administration, throwing her ports open to the world |
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Winston Churchill, 1895.
Randolph Churchill: Winston Churchill companion, vol 1, 1967, p. 617–8
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- Day 16
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I began singing ‘Dos gardenias’ (by Isolina Carrillo) and Ry Cooder recorded it. It was that way that I joined, without being in the project, because I was not part of the Buenavista (Social Club) project. I recorded four songs. Afterwards, came the tours, the Grammy. I did not know what the Grammy was, and I was told it is an award. I liked it a lot. I am still here, singing, and I will continue to sing as long as I have strength. |
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Singer Ibrahim Ferrer.
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- Day 17
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I wish to see Cuba as much of a political island as she is a geographic one. |
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Cuban priest Félix Varela championing Cuba’s independence from Spain.
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- Day 18
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Oscar is not my only son, I am the father of all the Cubans who have died for Cuba. |
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Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, after his son, Oscar, was taken prisoner and used by the Spaniards as a hostage to blackmail him into surrender. Oscar was executed on June 3, 1870.
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- Day 19
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I do not fear prison, as I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me. |
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The concluding sentences of a four hour speech made by Fidel Castro in his own defense in court against the charges brought against him after leading an attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953.
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- Day 20
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...amor cuerdo, no es amor...
...prudent love, isn't love... |
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Cuban poet and national figurehead José Martí.
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- Day 21
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I don’t know whether he is a Communist, but I am a Fidelista! |
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Soviet premier Sergei Khrushchev, when asked in 1961 whether Fidel Castro was a communist or not.
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- Day 22
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We're eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked. |
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U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk during the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962.
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- Day 23
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The colonization of Cuba is necessary and urgently required to give the white population of Cuba a moral and necessary preponderance over its black inhabitants. |
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José Antonio Saco, Cuban journalist and debator speaking in 1830 after the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies.
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- Day 24
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This republic is not a creature of Cubans - it was neither fashioned by them nor by them influenced - but on the contrary it is of all American manufacture. Americans built it. Americans set it up again when it fell flat. American influence is all that sustains it to this moment. If they discover anything to criticise in it, or its failure, let Americans remember in so criticising that they are dealing with the work of their own hands. |
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Writer Irene Aloha Wright in 1910, eight years after Cuban independence.
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- Day 25
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At dawn on October 9 we were hiding very close to the small schoolhouse at La Higuera. We saw the soldiers, observed the helicopters, but never imagined they were holding Che there. In the morning we heard the first news of his capture but reports were very confused, saying he was wounded, then saying he was not and that it was one of his officers. Finally they began to give details about his clothing and personal effects, and we knew it was true. |
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Harry "Pombo" Villegas on the death of Che Guevara.
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- Day 26
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One just principle from the depths of a cave is more powerful than an army. |
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José Martí speaking about the power of diplomacy over war before the Spanish–American War, 1891
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- Day 27
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If it is the case that Christians go to Heaven, then I chose to go to Hell, to ensure I never have to clap eyes on such brutes again. |
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Taíno chief Hatuey to a Spanish Franciscan friar before being tied to the stake and burnt alive at Yara, 1512.
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- Day 28
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El cariño que te tengo
No te lo puedo negar
Se me sale la babita
Yo no lo puedo evitar.
The love I have for you
is something I cannot deny
My mouth waters
There is nothing I can do. |
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From Chan Chan by Compay Segundo
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- Day 29
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I feel my belief in sacrifice and struggle getting stronger. I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened |
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Fidel Castro in a letter from Presidio Modelo (Model Prison), Dec. 19, 1953.
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- Day 30
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We are Cubans and have one great aim in view, one glorious object to obtain – the freedom of our country and liberty. It is of more importance to us than glory, public applause, or anything else. Everything else will follow in time. I have never believed in or advised a sanguinary revolution, but it must be a radical one. First of all we must triumph; toward that end the most effective means, although they may appear harsh, must be employed. |
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Máximo Gómez writing to Tomás Estrada Palma in 1895.
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- Day 31
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VII. That to enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its defense, the government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations at certain specified points, to be agreed upon with the President of the United States. |
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Part seven of the Platt Amendment of 1901. The amendment was created by U.S. Congress and ratified by Cuba during the U.S. occupation of the island, 1898-1902.
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