By Orlando Oramas Leon
Located by a lake, the modest building that houses the committee is announced on the highway with flags and signs promoting a “Cuban party” to collect funds and medicines in a campaign to support the people of the Caribbean island.
The Communist Party of Uruguay (PCU), the PIT-CNT trade union, the brigade in support of the Cuban Revolution, Frente Amplio (FA), and grassroots activists shared conversations, songs and feelings for an island that seems distant in geography, but close in sentiment.
This was discussed by Daniel Diverio, general secretary of the construction union (SUNCA) and recently elected FA lawmaker, who introduced speakers who talked about shared histories between both nations, united by the work of José Martí, who was Uruguay’s consul in New York.
Diverio highlighted more than 100,000 surgiries that Cuban ophthalmologists have performed here as part of a medical brigade that has been operating from the “José Martí” Eye Hospital for 17 years.
The union leader assured that the electoral victory of Frente Amplio is also an act of solidarity with Cuba, and he committed efforts to expand ties of cooperation between both countries during the next FA Government.
Gabriel Mazzarovich, from the PCU and one of many citizens tortured by the dictatorship that ruled his country between 1973 and 1985, traveled unforgettable paths of those ties with Fidel Castro’s homeland.
Cuba healed the injuries of those who were tortured, said the man who at 16 was already in a dungeon of that de facto regime and after the return to democracy had to undergo several surgical interventions in Cuban hospitals.
Solidarity is a two-way street, he said, and revealed the participation of Uruguayan communists in the Cuban epics for the liberation of Angola, Namibia and the collapse of apartheid in South Africa.
It was a day of joy and emotion, marked by the committed music of singer songwriter Axel, and to which Ambassador Jorge Martí, Cuban chargé d’affaires, added decibels of words.
He explained with simple and heartfelt words that the blockade against Cuba and its inclusion on the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list are two instruments by the Government of the United States to try to suffocate his compatriots and make the Revolution surrender.
What a fallacy against a country that offers the world doctors and teachers, he stressed.
We will never renounce our right to build socialism, said the diplomat, who expressed gratitude for the donation of medical supplies and medicines that a Uruguayan solidarity brigade will take to Cuba in January.
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