Havana, January 29 (RHC)-- Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said that honoring the legacy of Cuban National Hero Jose Marti is to defend Latin America's independence and sovereignty.

"Let us work for Latin American integration and unity.  Let us denounce imperialist domination.  This will be our just homage to Jose Marti," he wrote onTwitter -- on the occasion of the 166th anniversary of Marti's birth.

Rodríguez highlighted Marti's liberating thought, in particular his call to declare a second regional independence.  In an article entitled "Washington International Congress, its history, its elements and trends," published in La Nacion, Argentina, on December 19, 1889, Marti warned: "Spanish America was saved from the tyranny of Spain; and now, after seeing with judicial eyes the antecedents, causes and factors... it is urgent to say, because it is the truth, that the time has come for Spanish America to declare its second independence."

Cuba remembered its National Hero on Monday with several activities, among them the traditional March of the Torches in Havana, at which President Miguel Díaz-Canel was in attendance.