The image is Oswaldo Guayasamin’s personal portray of José Martí. This picture is originally shown in a mural created thirty years ago and placed in the terminal 4 of Barajas international airport, in Madrid, Spain.
The picture was taken by outstanding Spanish photographer José María Mellado and it has been reproduced in four printed canvas that were presented to Chairman of the José Martí Cultural Society Armando Hart Davalos, PhD; Abelardo Arteaga, a Cuban living in Tampa who used to be the son a cigar maker who was friends with Marti. The third copy is exhibited at the Guayasamín Museum, in the Historic Center of Havana, and the fourth one is placed at the information bureau of Radio Havana Cuba station.
The calendar will be launched in Havana at the headquarters of the Marti Studies Center, a scientific and cultural institution that has just celebrated 35 years of fruitful work in the scientific research and promotion of Marti’s work.
The presentation of the calendar and the delivery of a small number of printed canvases with Marti’s image are scheduled for October 23rd, to mark the 150th anniversary of the first letter Marti wrote to his mother Doña Leonor Perez.
In 1862, José Martí was only nine years old when he traveled with his father Don Mariano to Matanzas where he went to work as state manager. It was there when he wrote his first letter to his mother to tell her about his activities in that place.
To evoke Marti in its early years, his phrase “… children are the hope of the world” appears on the left corner of the calendar, along with his signature.
As it has happened for the last 50 years, listeners and friends of Radio Havana Cuba station will receive the 2013 pocket calendar, which will also evoke the 160th anniversary of Jose Marit’s birth, and promote the Third International Conference for the World Balance to be held in Havana, on January 28, 2013.
The reproductions of the image printed on canvas will be given to the ambassadors of member countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) for them to send to the presidents of their nations.
Five of these copies will be given on October 23rd to the relatives of Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert, Ramon Labañino Salazar, Fernando Gonzalez and Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez, the five Cuban antiterrorists unjustly held in US penitentiaries for more than fourteen years now.
The Cuban five, as they are also known, are followers of Marti’s thought and they prove everyday with dignity and strength that validity of Marti’s phrase: “One just principle from the depths of a cave can be mightier than an army.”
