The revolution is made through man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit day by day.
Thus we march on. At the head ofthe immense column - we are neither afraid nor ashamed to say it - is Fidel. After him come the best cadres of the party, and immediately behind them, so close that we feel its tremendous force, comes the people in its entirety, a solid mass of individualities moving toward a common goal, individuals who have attained consciousness of what must be done, men who fight to escape from the realm of necessity and to enter that of freedom.
This great throng becomes organized; its clarity of program corresponds to its consciousness of the necessity of organization. It is no longer a dispersed force, divisible into thousands of fragments thrown into space like splinters from a hand grenade, trying by any means to achieve some protection against an uncertain future, in desperate struggle with their fellows.
We know that sacrifices lie before us and that we must pay a price for the heroic act of being a vanguard nation. We leaders know that we must pay a price for the right to say that we are at the head of a people which is at the head of the Americas. Each and every one of us must pay his exact quota of sacrifice, conscious that he will get his reward in the satisfaction of fulfilling a duty, conscious that he will advance with all toward the image of the new man dimly visible on the horizon.
Let me attempt some conclusions: We socialists are freer because we are more complete; we are more complete because we are freer. The skeleton of our complete freedom is already formed. The flesh and the clothing are lacking. We will create them. Our freedom and its daily maintenance are paid for in blood and sacrifice.
Our sacrifice is conscious: an installment payment on the freedom that we are building. The road is long and in part unknown. We understand our- limitations. We will create the man of the twenty-first century - we, ourselves.
We will forge ourselves in daily action, creating a new man with a new technology.
Individual personality plays a role in mobilizing and leading the masses insofar as it embodies the highest virtues and aspirations of the people and does not wander from the path.
It is the vanguard group which clears the way, the best among the good, the party. The basic clay of our work is the youth. We place our hope in them and prepare them to take the banner from our hands. * * *
If this inarticulate letter clarifies anything it has accomplished the objective which motivated it.