The book “Privilegiados del tiempo” (Privileged of Time), launched on Thursday, includes 25 anecdotes and more than 100 photos of Fidel’s private and public moments.

The text is a compilation by journalists Ovidio Cabrera and Irma Caceres, who collected testimonies from colleagues who shared moments with the revolutionary leader.

Witnesses, including press professionals, Cuban Radio and Television technicians, and meteorologist Jose Rubiera, agreed that the leader’s humanism was his greatest virtue, without diminishing his reach as a statesman.

Every testimony of his political work from 1959 until his death, on November 25, 2016, highlights Fidel’s qualities as “a conversationalist, interested in people’s problems, the one who brings his people together, and leads them,” journalist Pedro Martinez Pirez said.

Rubiera, in turn, describes him in his dealings with people “as if you were talking to a brother or a friend, who is also eager for knowledge, from meteorology to the study of the planets and atmospheres,” he said.

He was the one who gave the shortest and most rigorous speech ever given by a statesman when he warned of the dangers facing the human species at the 1992 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the expert from the Cuban Institute of Meteorology (INSMET) said.

A microphone, a camera, and colleagues have always been in every event of national life to record it, “amplifying the guidelines, advice, the fair concept, and the patriotism that emanated from the Commander in Chief in defense of the independence, sovereignty, and freedom of the nations globally,” the text refers.

“Privilegiados del tiempo”, prologued by Tubal Paez, honorary president of the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC), will be launched in other scenarios in this capital, especially at the Fidel Castro Center, in the context of the 98th birthday of the Latin American and world leader.

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