{"id":520,"date":"2017-01-28T16:05:20","date_gmt":"2017-01-28T16:05:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/excrcl.com\/?p=520"},"modified":"2017-06-11T21:13:22","modified_gmt":"2017-06-11T21:13:22","slug":"jose-marti-and-lots-of-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/?p=520","title":{"rendered":"Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed and Lots of Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night, we experienced a festival unlike anything we\u2019ve ever seen before \u2013 all in celebration of Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed. A revolutionary, acclaimed poet, and powerful writer during the mid to late 19th<\/sup> century, Mart\u00ed became recognized as a sort of Cuban equivalent of Abraham Lincoln, as a champion for abolition and a journalist who worked tirelessly to keep all of Latin America informed of world news. It\u2019s impossible to miss monuments, pictures, references and buildings dedicated to Mart\u00ed here in Cuba; the magnitude of this celebration (of his birthday) should not have been a surprise to us, yet we were still unprepared.<\/p>\n

The event is mainly targeted towards Cuba\u2019s youth. Nearly every university and high school student in Havana attends. The gathering begins at around 8:00, atop the University of Havana steps. There, people pick from piles and piles of pre-made torches, which consist of wooden poles with metal cans attached atop. In the cans are different forms of kindling \u2013 cotton, cloth, plastic bags \u2013 which you then take to another station, where someone dumps a ton of gasoline onto your kindling.<\/p>\n

We waited roughly an hour and a half for the actual celebration to start (we\u2019re slowly getting used to this \u201cCuban time\u201d). It\u2019s impossible to describe the crowdedness; thousands of youth surrounded us, all holding their torches proudly, waiting for the main event: a long march to the coast. At the very end of the masses was Raul Castro, though he was way too far away for any of us to see him. A loudspeaker played music throughout the streets, as a very passionate Cuban woman started rallying the event, praising Mart\u00ed as a revolutionary as well as the Revolution itself.<\/p>\n

When it finally came time to march, little clusters of bonfires popped up and soon all the torches were ablaze. Considering the sheer number of people, many intoxicated, as well as the number of torches, this seemed like a recipe for a disaster for us. Everyone lit their torches, but almost all of us Americans ended up blowing them out, as gasoline ran down onto our hands and clothes. We proceeded to march, holding the torches, all the way to coastline of Havana, called the Malec\u00f3n. From the University steps, this was about a 13-block long march, so it was no joke. Throughout, the woman behind the microphone led us in chants \u2013 Viva la revoluci\u00f3n! Viva Cuba libre! Yo soy Fidel! \u2013 as Raul supposedly took the front.<\/p>\n

The sight was absolutely spectacular. Thousands of lights lit up the streets as Cubans proudly shouted their national pride. For an American, being part of something like this was absurd; under no circumstances would any event take place in America, as the health and safety hazards are unbelievable. I was shocked that this event has gone on for so long, considering how easily things \u2013 or people \u2013 could be set on fire. However, I\u2019ve come to find that Cubans are generally laid-back; why worry about what can go wrong when you can focus on being together and celebrating your country? Due to my own anxious personality, I was still admittedly pretty overwhelmed, but I think my professor, Brigitta, is right when she said, \u201cWhen you\u2019re 50 years old, you\u2019ll still remember this night.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night, we experienced a festival unlike anything we\u2019ve ever seen before \u2013 all in celebration of Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed. A revolutionary, acclaimed poet, and powerful writer during the mid to late 19th century, Mart\u00ed became […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cuba"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=520"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":658,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520\/revisions\/658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}