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)