According to dictionaries, a revolutionary is someone who favors or causes a complete change. Is directly related to the new, the cutting edge, never with the old and obsolete nor with the retrograde. In Cuba, in different eras, it was the one who fought for new ideas as opposed to the old, who proposed to change what did not work and replace it with something better, different. A position that, falling into excesses and contradictions in recent years, mortgaged both the present and the future.
The authorities, from the very beginning of their establishment, took over the term and, making it private property, gave it a single ideological and political connotation, depending on their interests. First, they declared its dogmatic character: it was or was not revolutionary. There was no possibility of change and transformation over time. The same thing happened with other words such as country, nation, sovereignty, independence, etc.: all were linked directly to the established power and the use of them was its private preserve.
However, as everything is in a constant process of transformation, what was once cutting-edge and new aged, and became an obstacle to the development of other ideas that came to replace the previous ones, already obsolete and therefore needing to be replaced. In trying to keep the irreversibility of the term at all costs, although it no longer meant the same as fifty years ago, they created an absurd situation where those currently sporting it, rather than representing new, represent the old, which it is necessary to change.
What happened is part of dialectical development: everything changes and what was once, with the passage of time, ceased to be and is supplanted by something new that also, over time, will be supplanted and so on while the world exists. Being a revolutionary is not a title that is granted for life, or that is passed to offspring. It is, first, a position that changes with life, also changing.
Although the term, so much used and adorned (complete revolutionary, firm revolutionary, dedicated revolutionary, strict revolutionary, etc.), does not enjoy much prestige and popularity among the younger generation, it should be rescued and restored to its real meaning, eliminating the political and ideological rust that has removed its luster. To be revolutionary today, is to be for change, for the new, the advanced, so it represents development and prosperity, both individually and in the nation, and does not cling to the past, the obsolete, to what has failed.
June 10 2011
