Marco Papacci, president of the Italy-Cuba National Friendship Association (Anaic), said in statements to Prensa Latina that the broad participation showed the unity of the Italian people around the common commitment to defend the homeland of Fidel Castro, on the eve of the 170th anniversary of the birth of José Martí, National Hero of that country.
Flags of Cuba and the July 26 Revolutionary Movement waved in the Plaza de la Rotonda, together with those of solidarity organizations such as Anaic and La Villetta for Cuba, the Red de los Comunistas, Cambiare Rotta and the Italian Communist Party, which had a broad representation of its militants.
Numerous members of other groups such as the Communist Refoundation Party, the Alternative Student Organization (OSA) and the Communist Party also attended, as well as members of the community of Cubans residing in Italy, as well as nationals of Peru, Brazil and other Latin American countries. based here.
The emotional event began at 5:00 p.m., continued with speeches by dozens of attendees, who agreed to recognize Cuba as an example of firmness, dignity, “of fighting without fear to build socialism only 90 miles from the North American empire” and “confidence in a better future, that it is possible”.
The condemnation of the commercial, economic and financial blockade of the United States to try to subdue the people of the Caribbean nation was unanimous, which, according to Papacci in his speech, has been able to resist it for more than 60 years and continues forward, to become “a moral giant.”
The words pronounced by several young Italians were moving, who reaffirmed that for them “Cuba is the lighthouse, the guide to build a more just society.”
Luciano Iacovino, president of the La Villetta group, assured that the people of this European nation were, are and will be on the side of the Cuban Revolution, and called on the associations, political movements and left-wing parties present at this act of friendship with the Island, not to lower our guard, as well as to maintain unity.
Many of the speakers ended their interventions with cries of Homeland or Death. Overcome! And ¡To Victory Forever!, which, as they pointed out, are slogans of great validity also in this part of the world.
At the end of the act, a large Cuban flag was unfurled around the fountain and under the Egyptian obelisk that crowns the Plaza de la Rotonda, in front of the thousand-year-old Pantheon in Rome.
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