Friends:
Congratulations to all the mothers on this day, and to all the women who with their maternal instinct, even if they do not have children, mothers are for those around them.
José Martí said beautiful phrases full of love towards his mother, since he was a teenager, he left for posterity beautiful poems dedicated to maternal love and his fervor for defending the mother country, the homeland of all Cubans.
It is always good to turn to Martí, but today more than ever his words full of love for his mother and his homeland to which he swears to defend and give his life, as he did, resonate.
There is a whole literature dedicated to his mother. For example, in 1868, for Doña Leonor’s birthday, he wrote a beautiful poem, still a teenager, one of whose stanzas says:
«Mother of the soul, dear mother,
They are your birthdays, I want to sing;
Because my soul, full of love,
Although very young, he never forgets
Of whom life had to give me….
But, in Martí’s life, love for his mother and love for the Homeland are forever located on both sides of a scale.
An example of his love for his mother and his homeland was his epic poem Abdala, which when it was published, Martí was about to turn 16, and Cuba had been fighting for independence for several months. To a large extent, the life of Abdala described by Martí was as an anticipated reflection of his own existence, since with the passing of time he even knew how to face contradictions that arose within the family, due to his decision to give absolute priority to everything referred to the development of the struggle for the independence of his native land. Like Abdala, Martí knew how to fight and die in defense of his homeland. In his work, in the continuity of the dialogue between mother and son, through what the character Abdala says, Martí offers an image full of transcendence about the meaning he gives to the word Homeland.
Love, mother, to the homeland
It is not ridiculous love to earth,
Not even the grass that our plants tread;
It is the invincible hatred of those who oppress her
It is the eternal rancor who attacks her;
In the prison in the quarries of San Lázaro. At just 17 years old, he doesn’t complain; However, in the first photograph that he manages to dedicate to his mother, with the shackle tight around his waist and from there to the ankle, he writes on the back: “Look at me, mother, and don’t cry for your love. If I slave to my age and my doctrines, Your martyr heart filled with thorns, Think that flowers are born among thorns ”.
In the farewell letter to his mother written on March 25, 1895 from Montecristi he says … «My mother: Today, March 25, on the eve of a long journey, I am thinking of you. I constantly think of you. You hurt, in the anger of your love, of the sacrifice of my life; And why was I born from you with a life that loves sacrifice? Words, I can’t. A man’s duty is where it is most useful. But with me always goes, in my growing and necessary agony, the memory of my mother. “
Let us remember on this day these words of our national hero, as beautiful and valid as ever.
Embacuba Greece
