Decreet No. 74,
from the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers
of the Republic of Cuba, August 22nd, 1980
INSOFAR AS: The National
Anthem of Cuba accompanied and encouraged the independent
revolutionaries who after the seizure of Bayamo transformed
urgent needs and dreams into acts, and with the proclamation
of independence and the abolition of slavery, started
the hundred years of struggle on which our people stands
its identity and forge the Cuban nation.
INSOFAR AS: From the constitution
of the Revolutionary Committee which prepared the insurrection,
stirred up by patriotism and decision, those commited,
our forefathers , would consider the need of creating
a war chant to awake sensibilities and enthusiasm, and
led the fighters, and the whole people to the road of
freedom.
INSOFAR AS: That Hymn composed
by Perucho Figueredo, one of the
heroes who forged the spirit of insurrection and started
it, fulfilled its aim since the first moment, challenging,
, colonial authorities, with the richness of its sound
and its patriotic intention, when being performed for
the first time in the Corpus Christi procession, in
Bayamo, in the dawning of the Proclamation of Independence
and the abolition of slavery.
INSOFAR AS: La Bayamesa,
our National Anthem, was orchestrated by a Cuban musician,
maestro Muñoz Cedeño,
as a symbol of the double root of our national culture,
Spanish and African, it is to say, mestizo; and performed
by the first time by an orchestra made up by musicians
from Bayamo to an audience whose heart was beating full
of solidarity and enthusiasm.
INSOFAR AS: The Nacional
Anthem of Cuba, La Bayamesa,
found its lyrics amidst combat and triumph, in the first
victory of theLiberator (Mambí) Army and in the
pen of his musical creator , Perucho Figueredo, who
riding his blazing horse and with all deeply touched
the people waiting, composed the eight-line stanza which,
since then, our people sings and forever will sing as
a hymn of struggle and victory, and also as etenal tribute
to all creators.
INSOFAR AS: In “History
Will Absolve Me”, laying the foundations
for the heroic atac to the Moncada garrison , is stated
: “ We were taught to love and defend the beautiful
flag of the lone star and to sing every evening a hymn
whose verse said that to live chained is to live under
affront and opprobium submitted, and to die fpor our
motherland is to live. We learned all that ..”
thus stating the precious value of what was the first
work of Cuban culture in arms, and its unyieldng and
liberator tribute.
INSOFAR AS: The Constitution
of the Republic acknowledges and states in its Article
4 the Hymn of Bayamo as one of the three national symbols
which the Cuban struggles for independence had presided
together with the Cuban Flag of
the Lone Star and the Coat
of Arms of the Royal Palm Tree, for the rights of
the people and for the social progress, for more than
a hundred years.
INSOFAR AS: We acknowledge
in the National Anthem of Cuba our Bayamesa, the symbol
in which the motherland love feeling an combat decission
interweaves, the artistic expression of that cultural
act in which the people stands and conquer its whole
identity, the freedom war.
INSOFAR AS: It becomes
necessary to elect a date to commemorate yearly the
rising of the Cuban Culture, independentist, antipro-slavery
, antimperialist and pointing towards social project.
THEREFORE: On behalf of
the faculties conferred to it, the Executive Committee
of the Council of Ministers decreets the following :
FIRST: To settle October
20th as “DIA DE LA CULTURA CUBANA"
(“DAY OF THE CUBAN CULTURE”) Commemorating
October 20th, 1868, when the Liberation Army (Mambí)
troops leadered by Carlos Manuel de
Céspedes freed the City of Bayamo and its
people sang our National Anthem, La Bayamesa, for the
first time, thus expresssing the independence spirit
in its flaming music and patriotic poetry, whole chant
to freedom uprising and to abolition of slavery and
artisitic expression of that deep and irreversible act
shaper of Cuban awareness, highest and most genuine
expression of our national culture.
SECOND: To Establish a
yearly arrangement of a program of activities leading
to commemorate the “DAY OF THE CUBAN CULTURE”,
in our country, under the guidelines of the Ministry
of Culture.
THIRD: Each and every resolution
and regulation opposed to the present Decreet, which
will be putting into effect from been published in the
Gaceta Oficial de la República, are
derogated.
ISSUED in Havana City, in August 22nd, One Thousand
and Ninety Eighty, “YEAR OF THE SECOND CONGRESS”
Fidel Castro Ruz
President of the Council of Ministers
Armando Hart Dávalos
Minister of Culture
Osmany Cienfuegos Gorriarán
Secretary of the Council of Ministers and its Executive
Committee.
(NOTE: Traslation: Web Cubarte)
|