On Tuesday night, the Guayasamin Foundation paid tribute to the 8th anniversary of the Chapel of Man and the 50th anniversary of Radio Havana Cuba (RHC), in a moving ceremony where the voices of Oswaldo Guayasamin and Fidel Castro were aired.

The meeting took place at the Foundation’s museum and was attended by the ambassadors of Cuba and Bolivia, Jorge Rodriguez and Juan Javier Zarate, respectively, as well as by diplomats, the Foundation’s executive committee, intellectuals, government officials, journalists and friends of Cuba.

A distinctive element of this homage was the presentation by RHC deputy director Pedro Martinez Pirez of the 2011 pocket calendar depicting the first painting of Cuban leader Fidel Castro by the Painter of Latin America.

Fidel’s picture, made on May 6, 1961, and sadly missing, was recreated by prominent painter Agustin Bejarano from eastern Camagüey province, and it’s present not only on the calendars, but also in big printings on canvas, one of which was received in Quito by Berenice Guayasamin.

The president of the Foundation, Pablo Guayasamin, congratulated RHC for its 50th anniversary and highlighted the work of Martinez Pírez for several decades as a promoter of solidarity between Ecuador and Cuba and of these calendars for 14 years.

Moving verses by Ecuadorian poet José (Pepe) Regato, read by his wife, Clara Fernandez, embellished the two tributes, in which the voices of Fidel and Guayasamin brought little-known details on the picture presented.

Finally, the president of the Association of Journalists of Pichincha province -where there the capital is located-, René Espin, gave RHC a plaque in recognition of its over five decades of work, devoted to the spreading of the noblest causes of humanity.

Martinez highlighted the founding of RHC by Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara in difficult moments of the Cuban Revolution’s struggle for survival, and recalled Carlos Bastida, the Ecuadorian journalist assassinated by the Batista dictatorship in 1958.


Translated by Daysi Olano

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