Tribute to Nicolás Guillén on the 30th anniversary of his death

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the death of Cuban journalist, poet and politician Nicolás Guillén, the foundation that bears his name has organized tribute days to his memory and legacy, which will take place between July 10 and 16, in various institutions of the Historical Center of Havana.

Dr. Eusebio Leal, Historian of the City, will be in charge of the words at the official inauguration, the 10th, at 10 o'clock in the morning, of a statue carved in bronze of the founding president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), at a natural size, made by the Cuban artist Enrique Angulo, and located in the Alameda de Paula in Havana, in Old Havana.

The commemorative program includes book presentations, readings of poems, exhibitions of plastic arts and academic panels that will center on the life and work of Nicolás Guillén (Camagüey, July 10, 1902 - Havana, July 17, 1989), National Prize for Literature, 1983.

On July 11, the People and Places of Havana meeting will be announced, which will also include the National Literature Prize Nancy Morejón, at the Dulce María Loynaz Center.

The Nicolás Guillén Foundation, and its Sensemayá publishing house, which has the mission to preserve, study and promote the Guillen work, prepare the presentation of several titles of the Palma Sola collection among them, a recent edition of the Sóngoro Cosongo poetry book, (1931), which will focus attention on the Book Saturday of July 12.

The renowned writer and essayist Virgilio López Lemus will present this volume, of which the author himself affirmed «(...) these are some mulatto verses. They participate perhaps in the same elements that go into the ethnic composition of Cuba (...) and in which they use a language that has never been published in Cuban literature and strengthens their intention to define the true identity of the nation.

The Culture and Revolution Colloquium will be held in the Martinez Villena room of the UNEAC on the 15th in the morning, and will feature the interventions of Abel Prieto, Nancy Morejon, Luis Álvarez Álvarez, and the Jamaican writer and professor Keith Ellis, one of the most important scholars of the work of Guillén; then at 2 o'clock in the afternoon it will be the opening of the photographic exhibition I was going along a path ..., in the gallery Villa Manuela.

On July 16, the date of the physical disappearance of the poet, worthy of the José Martí Order in 1981, a pilgrimage to the Pantheon of the Revolutionary Armed Forces will take place in the morning, where his remains rest; the central words of this act will be pronounced by the Culture Minister Alpidio Alonso.

That day, at two o'clock in the afternoon, El Libro del Mes (The Book of the Month), one of Guillén's essential poems, will be presented: La paloma de vuelo popular, published for the first time in Buenos Aires in 1958, during the poet's exile. collects 39 texts that he had written over a decade, and that have a strong social and popular, among which are the well-known poem “La muralla” (The wall).

The 30th Anniversary of the death of Nicolás Guillén will have the support of the Ministry of Culture, UNEAC, the Cuban Book Institute and the Dulce María Loynaz Center.