This August 13, the leader of all Cubans, Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro will be 95 years old. His history and life is full of facts that place him at the top of the podium of the Homeland, next to José Martí, our National Hero. Many writings affirm that Fidel is a country, and there is no greater symbolism to characterize him.

In some reflections, for his 90th birthday, published on August 12, 2016, the Commander himself, recalled:

"Tomorrow I will be 90 years old. I was born in a territory called Biran, in the eastern region of Cuba. By that name it is known, although it has never appeared on a map. Given its good behavior it was known by close friends and, of course, by a square of political representatives and inspectors who were seen around any commercial or productive activity typical of the neo-colonized countries of the world."

 "On one occasion I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old at the time. How he loved to talk when he left the house in Biran! There he was the owner of the land where he planted sugar cane, pastures and other agricultural crops. But in the Pinares de Mayari he was not an owner, but a tenant, like many Spaniards, who were owners of a continent by virtue of the rights granted by a Papal Bull, the existence of which none of the peoples and human beings of this continent knew. The knowledge transmitted was already in great part treasures of humanity."

Fidel was always consistent with his life, and in his work he emphasized his rejection of abuses and pressures sustained against the weakest. It was that trait of his personality that led him to prepare a group of young people "Generation of the Centenary", to take the sky by assault, and remove the preeminent Dictatorship under the baton of Fulgencio Batista, and in eastern Cuba, that generation did not let their Apostle die in the year of its Centenary.

Many of the survivors of the assault on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes in Bayamo, on July 26, 1953, continued to accompany him, and after leaving the Isla de Pinos prison (today Isla de la Juventud) from Tuxpan, they traveled on the Granma yacht, and arrived on eastern soil, to make the Revolution: Thus was born the rebel army.

And the poet Jesús Orta Ruiz "El indio Nabori", symbolizes the event that took place "the morning of Santa Ana".

The martyrs all invade the day, / cheer up cities, liberate the mountain...I already hear the songs of Gómez García / in rapid transit from flower to mockingbird: / July 26th: wounds / where the dawn arose: high avenging date / of the offended dates / Hot blood of lives broken by heroism / when treason and cynicism / danced on a Calvary...  / Oh, necessary dew / to the flower of patriotism!

And Fidel was the inspiration of one of his companions, the doctor and master of the guerrilla struggle, the legendary man, the Argentine Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (Che), who captured it in poetry:

Let's go,

ardent prophet of the dawn,

by recondite wireless paths,

to free the green alligator that you love so much.

Let's go.

Defeating affronts with your forehead

-Full of Martian insurrectionary stars-

Let us vow to triumph or meet death.

When the first shot rings out and awakens,

in virginal astonishment, the whole manigua,

there at your side, serene combatants,

you will have us.

When your voice spreads to the four winds:

Agrarian Reform, justice, bread, freedom,

there at your side, with identical accents,

you will have us.

Or the masterful prose of Carilda Oliver Labra, the poetess from Matanzas who bequeathed us forever her verses to Fidel:

I am not going to name the East,

I am not going to name the Sierra,

I will not name the war

-painful different light-,

I will not name the forehead,

the forehead without a string,

the forehead for the laurel,

the forehead of lead and grape:

I am going to name all of Cuba:

I am going to name Fidel.

The Commander in Chief Fidel Castro provoked much admiration all over the world, not only in his green alligator. His universal dimension qualifies him as a statesman with great feelings of love.

One of his most enlightened speeches (he delivered many) was made by Fidel on September 4, 1995, on the occasion of the Centennial of the Fall of José Martí, on the occasion of the beginning of the 1995/96 school year. That day in addition to addressing his primary, secondary and university studies, he referred to his emotions as a student, and evaluated the motives that made him a revolutionary.

There he said: "It was a privilege to enter this university too, no doubt, because here I learned a lot, and because here I learned perhaps the best things of my life; because here I discovered the best ideas of our time and of our times, because here I became revolutionary, because here I became Martiano and because here I became socialist, first utopian socialist, thanks to the lectures of that professor we mentioned before, Delio, who gave classes on political economy, and capitalist political economy, so difficult to understand and so easy to discover in its irrationality and in its absurd things.  That's why I was first a utopian socialist, although also thanks to my contacts with political literature, here at the university and in law school, I converted to Marxism-Leninism."

An ample connoisseur of history, Fidel always fustigated "the brutal and revolted north", the north that despises the peoples. At such an early date, when declaring the socialist character of the Revolution, on April 16, 1961, at the funeral honors of the victims of the bombing of different points of the Republic, carried out in the capital's vedado, at 23rd and 12th, in front of the Colón cemetery he expressed with indignation, after mentioning the broad subversive operations to demonize the Revolution:

"What the imperialists cannot forgive us is that we have made a socialist Revolution under the very noses of the United States."

And in our Havana, "Real y Maravillosa". In the "José Martí" Revolution Square, when celebrating July 26, 1961, he outlined these words that seem to have been said today-

"Because of course there is a lot of talk about our Revolution, good and bad.  We all know who speaks well, and we all know who speaks bad; we all know who defends it and who fights against it.  And it is not precisely landowners, or presidents of monopolies, or directors of mercenary and yellow press, who make up the legions of defenders of the Cuban Revolution."

"It is possible that lies and systematic slander may find among the men of the people someone who may be a victim of confusion; it is possible that among the men of the people they may recruit some stray brain or other to hostilize our Revolution. What is certain is that they will never conquer the heart of any true worker, of any true peasant, of any true intellectual, of any true revolutionary! "

I am Fidel! is not a slogan, it is not a slogan, it is a principle of the generation continuing the country that the leader of the Revolution gestated. His legacy is the guide that moves the social actors that transform Cuba, in its quixotic path in its contemporaneity.

Fidel is a paradigm, a symbol of dignity, sovereignty, independence, resistance, development and defense of the poor of this world. He is and will always be a man of motherland or Death! and by drinking from the sap of all his teachings, we Cubans who follow him will surely win!

By María Salomé Campanioni and Víctor Pérez-Galdós