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• 01 / 29 / 2010

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With a torch march led mostly by students of the University of Havana, the Cuban youth paid honour to the national hero Jose Marti on the eve of his 157th birth anniversary in this city.

    The students walked with their lit torches from the stairs of the University to the Fragua Martiana community centre and museum, just in the same way a group of youngsters did it for the first time 56 years earlier to commemorate the centenary of the Apostle.

The site where the Fragua Martiana is located, in the Centro Havana municipality, was the former San Lazaro quarry, to where Jose Marti was sent at 16 as he was punished to hard work by the colonial regime for his independence ideas.

Participants in the patriotic demonstration chanted slogans all along the way in support of Cuban revolution leader Fidel Castro and in rejection of the United States’ imperialism.

Already in the Fragua Martiana, the young Cubans sang the national anthem. Higher Education Minister Miguel Diaz-Canel and Youth Communist League’s First Secretary Liudmila Alamo took a flower wreath to the monument of Jose Marti and placed them next to a Cuban flag carried by Raul Castro on the first torch march, back in 1953.

Right before midnight, before the beginning of the march, Gladys Gutierrez, president of the University Students Federation (FEU) addressed the crowd. She said the Cuban youth continues to defend Jose Marti’s ideas and those of his greatest disciple Fidel Castro. She referred as well to the organization of the 9th UJC Congress summoned for next April.

Source: ACN