On his X account, the head of State recalled Céspedes’s statement when he said, “Cubans: I count on your heroism to achieve independence. I count on your virtue to consolidate the Republic. Count on my abnegation.”

Prime Minister Manuel Marrero, in turn, recalled the words of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, when he said that Céspedes symbolized the spirit of the Cubans of that time, he symbolized the dignity and rebelliousness of a people -still heterogeneous- that was starting to rise in history.”

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez highlighted the hero’s thoughts when very early, he warned that the aspiration of the US Government was to take over Cuba.

Exactly 150 years ago, the man known here as the Father of the Homeland was killed during an unequal combat against Spanish colonialist troops in the town of San Lorenzo, in Sierra Maestra, in eastern Cuba.

A lawyer by profession and landowner, Céspedes set his slaves free in La Demajagua farm, in the eastern province of Granma, on October 10, 1868, and called them to independence or death to start the war of liberation against Spain.

jg/jav/mem/mpp