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In Cuba: Letters are Crying for Benedetti
For the people of this Caribbean island, to which he dedicated his biggest sympathies, who followed closely his letters, the death of Mario Benedetti in his Uruguayan home at the age of 88 years old, due to an intestinal disease, transcends towards the deepest of the endless memories.

The immense poet, narrator, literary critic, journalist and reporter from Montevideo, a city to which he arrived in his early life, joined his fruitful literary work to his persistent opposition to the military dictatorship (1973 – 1985) in his country.

Due to this dictatorship he was exiled for twelve years in Spain, Argentina, Peru and Cuba, a country that received him as one of his best sons and where he dedicated an important part of his time to the Casa de las Americas.

“Cuba has always been a very important word for me, even before I travelled to that country. The Cuban Revolution was for many people in Uruguay an alert, it shacked us, because we saw the posibility of some how face that political, economic, cultural and militar prerssure from the USA”.

He was the author of over 80 books of poems, novels, stories, essays and theatre, as well as movie scripts and humor chronics. The Uruguayan writer won the Queen Sophie Award of Iberian American Poetry, the Mendez Pelayo Award, the Jose Marti Iberian American Award and the ALBA Award in its first edition.

Benedetti (Paso de los Toros, Tacuarembó Department, Uruguay, 14 of September 1920) strongly denounced the threats of the US President George W Bush against Cuba and the brutal blockade imposed by the US which has lasted already six decades against our people. In 2005 he raised his voice to demand Washington the extradition of the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. “It is obvious it is not a common immigrant, but a murderer and if the US government gives him asylum, they would automatically become an ally of that crime”. In that same position he demanded the freedom of the Five Heroes.

He was one of the members of the so called generation of the 45, who captivated the people with the warmth of his vigorous, penetrating and sensible texts that makes him be among the great writers of the Iberian American literature. Among his successful stories there are La muerte y otras sorpresas (1968), Recuerdos olvidados (1988), Buzón del tiempo (1999) and El porvenir de mi pasado (2003),and the dramas El reportaje (1958) and El viaje de salida (2008).

Some of his unforgotten novels are La tregua (1960),Gracias por el fuego (1965) and Las soledades de Babel (1991), while it is worth mentioning his essays Marcel Proust y otros ensayos (1951), Letras del continente mestizo (1967), Subdesarrollo y letras de osadía (1987) y Perplejidades de fin de siglo (1993).

Many of us had under the pillow his rebel, solidarity and loving poetry, such as Te quiero (1956), Ex presos (1980), Viento del exilio (1981), El olvido está lleno de memoria (1995), El mundo que respiro (2001) and Existir todavía (2003).

A virtuous of the letters has died. Long life the Poet!

(Cubarte)



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