Haydee Santamaria

Havana, Dec 31 (RHC) Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel highlighted the 100th anniversary of the birth of Cuban heroine and intellectual Haydée Santamaría, who directed Casa de las Américas after the revolutionary triumph.

Also, the writer Abel Prieto, president of that institution, called to remind her "with her revolutionary passion, her devotion to #Martí and #Fidel, her courage, her dedication to the @CasAmericas and the construction from the culture of the Great Latin American and Caribbean Homeland".

One hundred years after her birth, the example of Haydee Santamaria lives on today in this cultural center, based in this capital, which celebrates a whole commemorative day to pay tribute to the heroine of the Cuban Revolution.

Testimonies, documents, and interviews confirm the value of Santamaría, who was born in the town of Encrucijada in the center of the island where her family's birth house, declared a national monument of Cuba, is preserved.

From its official website, the House distinguishes a series of materials related to the admiration felt by several personalities such as the prima ballerina assoluta, Alicia Alonso, the intellectuals Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Pablo Armando Fernandez, and Cintio Vitier.

In the words of the prima ballerina, "she was a person who inspired strength, encouragement and, above all, transmitted a principle of great honesty towards the Revolution. We could talk to her for hours and hours, and we always wanted to keep listening to her. She had a completely new way of analyzing the problems, and approaching any subject ".

Vitier's considerations stand out, who recalled the heroine's iron political will when he alluded that "when Haydée spoke of the assault on the Moncada Barracks, she did so not only as a participant in a historical event but also in a biological and spiritual fact, as a mother speaks of childbirth".

The House also socialized letters, articles, and speeches, which were bequeathed by Santamaria herself at different moments of her life before the revolutionary triumph and later as manager of literary events and hostess of important intellectual figures, while the entity dedicated the last issue of its homonymous magazine to appraise the exceptional personality of its founder.

For Jaime Gomez, vice president of Casa de las Americas and one of the compilers of the valuable text Hay que defender la Vida, "the Moncada, the underground, the sierra, the exile, the triumph of January 1959, the Casa were part of the same thing, they were part of his struggle, of his will to work permanently for all possible justice".

He meant that not only for Cuba, but for all the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean and beyond, for the peoples of the Third World, and even for the communities that suffer discrimination and exclusion in developed countries.

The volume, co-published by the seal of the regional institution and Ocean Sur, was presented as a tribute to the 100 years of its protagonist and seeks to promote Santamaría's ideology among new generations of Cubans as well as readers of the continent. (Source: PL)