• Submitted by: admin
• Arts and Culture
• Caribbean
• culture an traditions
• international
• Sancti Spiritus
• Society
• South America
• 06 / 19 / 2009

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The event was echoed throughout the world and was kept for ever along with the images captured by hundreds of cameras.

According to Estela Bravo’s documentary entitled Fidel (2001), the idea of having the Cuban leader dressed in the traditional Cuban shirt was suggested by his Colombian friend and Literature Nobel prize Gabriel García Márquez, who hosted Fidel during his stay in the Caribbean city.

The white linen long-sleeved shirt will be part of the collection encouraged by Sancti Spiritus’s socio-cultural project La Guayabera, which has collected shirst owned by outstanding people from Cuban community, politic, cultural and social sectors.

Cuban journalist Ciro Bianchi and his wife Silvia Mayra Gómez, both members of the abovementioned project, will be the bearers of the shirt donated by Fidel to the land where this shirt’s said to be originally from.

The shirt will be handed over next June 20 in the local Rubén Martínez Villena library, the place from where Fidel addressed local residents for the first time after the liberation of the city by the Rebel Army over 50 years ago.

Similar donations have been received from Raul Castro, Vilma Espín, Alicia Alonso, Faustino Pérez, Octavio Cortázar, Melba Hernández, Juan Almeida, Ricardo Alarcón, Miguel Barnet, Armando Hart, Roberto Fernández Retamar, José Ramón Fernández and  Evelio Rodríguez Plaza, among others.

Cuban photographer Liborio Noval gave the Project the first picture he took to Fidel Castro wearing the guayabera upon his arrival in Colombian for the summit.

The almost two-year old cultural project, made up of intellectuals, artists and community and mass organization leaders, seeks the cultural revival of the Yayabo city and aims to found the Casa de la Guayabera (The Guayabera House), a center for the study and rehabilitation of Sancti Spiritus, one of the first villages founded in Cuba 495 years ago.  

(Escambray.cu)