By Alejandra Garcia on December 3, 2024
Cuban President Miguel Diaz Canel leads the march in memory of the 8 student martyrs
This November 27, Cuba commemorated the 153rd anniversary of the execution of the eight medical students, an event that marked the history of our country. We never forget. This year, the pilgrimage march took place in Havana, where more than 80 thousand participants, mostly young students, joined the eternal homage to the martyrs who fell in 1871. The event highlighted the historical memory and the value of social and civic commitment among the new generations. Cuban students paid a well-deserved tribute to the victims of a colonial system that fostered inequalities and racism in the country, to the point of consummating crimes such as the one perpetrated in that November.
What happened 153 years ago? Why Cuba marches for the innocence of these young men, who will never be forgotten? On Friday afternoon, November 24, 1871, the students of the first year of Medicine of the University of Havana were waiting for the arrival of their professor, Dr. Pablo Valencia y Garcia, who was due to give his Anatomy class at 3:00 pm. When the students found out that the professor would be late, some of them entered the cemetery and walked through its courtyards to make some time, since the entrance was open to anyone. One of them plucked a flower while the others played among the graves, like the young boys they were, aged between 16 and 21.
The cemetery caretaker named Vicente Cobas, mortified by that group of young people who had “ruined his flower beds”, made a false statement to the political governor Dionisio López Roberts, accusing that the students had scratched the glass that covered the tomb of the Spanish journalist Gonzalo de Castañon. The accusation was false but the Spanish authorities did not even bother to verify the facts. Instead took advantage of it to use it as an excuse for a collective reprimand and example in the capital, where there had already been some demonstrations calling for independence from Spanish colonialism.
The students were prosecuted, and the young man who had plucked the flower, Alonso Alvarez de la Campa, 16, was sentenced to death. The Spanish authorities were not satisfied, and the four others who had entered and played in the cemetery were also sentenced to death. Still dissatisfied, they kept asking for more deaths and decided to cast lots, as if such a tragedy were a game, and sentenced to death three more students, including one who was out of Havana on the day of the events.
Along with Alonso Alvarez, there were Anacleto Bermudez, 20; Carlos Augusto de la Torre, 20; Eladio Gonzalez, 20; Carlos Verdugo, 17, Juan Pascual, 21; Angel Laborde, 17; Jose de Marcos, 20 years. And the pain remains intact 153 years later.
The eight students were led with handcuffed hands and a crucifix to the esplanade of La Punta, in Havana, where the execution was to take place. They were placed two by two, on their backs and on their knees. One of them took off his blindfold and stood up in front of the executioners, as a demonstration of dignity. The eight students were shot at 4:20 in the afternoon of November 27, 1871.
This Wednesday, the march advanced from the steps of the University of Havana with flags, posters, photos of the eight students shot to the monument to the eight medical students, on the esplanade of La Punta. “Whoever has a heart,” wrote Fermin Valdes Domínguez, a friend of those shot, ”can never forget that day.”
The expression “neither forgotten nor dead” was heard during the march down San Lazaro Street. There was a sign that read Apostle Jose Martí’s words: “Life begins, at last, with death!”.
Medical and Health Technology students stood in honor guard in front of the monument. Young Frank Ferrero was one of them and told the local media: “The murder of those children is a painful remembrance. When Fermin Valdes Domínguez -who was also Jose Martí’s best friend- found the remains of the youngsters in 1887, more than 10 years after they were thrown into a mass grave, Cuba had forgotten about the eight students. But since then, there is not a year in which the island, and its young people, have not remembered and honored them.”
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano – English