Amid the hubbub stirred by the concert in Havana, the 70th anniversary of Jorge Mas Canosa's birth went almost unobserved. His relatives, along with a group of his friends who have not forgotten him, celebrated his birth on Sept. 21 at Bacardi House.

Barely 48 hours earlier, a non-Cuban artist delighted more than a million young people on the public square that should never have ceased to be the Plaza of Martí to become the plaza of hatred, while she chided them, ``It is time to replace hatred with love.'' Many others have not said the same.

José Martí, Cuba's 19th century apostle, often told us to place love before hatred. Jorge Mas Canosa, the 20th century apostle of exile, turned his own life into a crusade to eradicate from the Cuban soul the hatred sown into it by Castroism.

During the commemoration of his birth, I selected some paragraphs from Jorge's recently published works to read out loud. One of his works has special meaning at this time. In a speech he delivered -- what a great coincidence -- on Jan. 28, 1963, to commemorate José Martí's birth, Jorge said:

``To be the legitimate bearers of our people's desire for freedom; to be faithful promoters of Martí's revolution and true enemies of the atheistic and materialistic revolution; to enable love to overcome hatred, harmony to replace violence, honest construction to take the place of genocidal vandalism, sovereignty and independence to replace an abject and denigrating submission, we have to begin by loving each other. We have to begin by building a firm national unity deprived of Castroite hatred; we have to begin by fostering the patriotic reconciliation of all democratic, freedom-loving Cubans, by shedding the sterile and barren resentments that lead nowhere and serve only to destroy.''

Three decades later, during a radio appearance with Agustín Tamargo on Mesa Revuelta, on Feb. 14, 1991, Jorge said:

``He who does not desire and demand for Cuba a solution with the least possible quota of bloodshed is no Cuban. We can disagree, we can adopt different tactics, different strategies, but we Cubans must stop killing each other, at some stage in Cuba's history. We cannot continue to proclaim blood, vengeance, futile revenge. When we arrive in Cuba, we must embrace all Cubans, even those who are Communist Party militants or high-ranking officials in the Cuban government.

``The tragedy of Cuba is a consequence of Castro's attitude, of his criminal nature and that of his brother Raúl and a very small group. Unless we wipe the slate clean and embrace all other Cubans, we shall never stop the bloodshed in Cuba.''

During a visit by several directors of the Cuban American National Foundation to the headquarters of Jonas Savimbi in Angola, I found among the belongings of an Angolan soldier captured by Savimbi's forces a certificate of training signed -- what great irony -- by Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, who was later executed by order of Fidel and Raúl Castro. On the other side of the document, there was an excerpt from a speech by Che Guevara, that said, verbatim:

``Hatred is a factor of struggle. Intransigent hatred of the enemy drives man beyond his natural limitations and turns him into an effective, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers need to be like that. A people without hatred cannot triumph over a brutal enemy. Che.''

I walked over to Jorge and said: ``Look what I found.'' Jorge read it and answered: ``Pepe, our sacred mission, the legacy of the foundation, must be to eradicate that hatred that Castroism has infused into the Cuban soul. We must make love our factor of struggle.''

The million Cuban youths who gathered at the plaza grew up saluting the flag while they were forced to say in unison: ``Pioneers for communism, we shall be like Che.'' Let us thank those artists who, though they are not Cubans and were criticized by some Cubans, went to the Plaza to sing for love, peace and the freedom of Cubans.

Jose ``Pepe'' Hernandez is president of the Cuban American National Foundation.