Cuban-Azerbaijani Intergovernmental Commission Underway in Baku

HAVANA, Cuba. Cuba’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment, Ricardo Guerrero Blanco, arrived on Monday in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, heading the Caribbean nation’s delegation to the second session of the Cuban-Azerbaijani Intergovernmental Commission that began yesterday and concludes today in Baku.

Guerrero was welcomed by Dr. Nazim Samadov, Secretary of the Commission for the Azerbaijani side and also Director of Cultural Programs and International Bodies of the Azerbaijani Minister of Culture and Tourism.

Also present was the Cuban Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Marcelo Caballero Torres.

According to the Azerbaijani Minister of Culture and Tourism, Abulfaz Garayev, his country plans to participate in developing oil fields in Cuba in line with a draft cooperation agreement. “The accord is expected to be signed in the near future,” the Minister said.

Last year, Cuba produced around 4 million tons of oil, while Azerbaijan’s oil production reached 45 million tons.

On Monday, the sides also discussed cooperation in medicine, food production, culture and tourism.

The first meeting of the commission took place in Havana in November 2007.

(Celebran comisión mixta Cuba-Azerbaiján)

Casa de las Américas Mourns the Death of Mario Benedetti

HAVANA, Cuba. With the following note, Havana's Casa de las Américas cultural institution joins the organizations, friends and intellectuals from around the world in mourning the death of Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti on Sunday:

Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti has just died; sad news for Latin American literature. In the mid 1940s Benedetti began to weave a vast and diverse work of not only the poetry and narrative that would captivate millions of readers, but also of essays, plays, critiques, and
news articles.

Captivating, incisive, and controversial, Benedetti had the capacity to attract crowds wherever he brought his verses and to generate heated intellectual and political debates. His dozens of books are among the most read in Latin American literature of the second half of the 20th
century.

Our friend Mario Benedetti has just died. The news is painful for those who could always count on his voice and solidarity. Since his first visit to Cuba in 1966, his commitment to the construction of a new society was exemplary.

His strong convictions threw him into exile (a good part of which he spent in Havana). He never hesitated to defend his ideas, which were also our ideas, in all the forums he attended. He was hounded for his support of Cuba, but he never gave up for a single moment the support of a Revolution he considered his own.

Our very close friend Mario Benedetti has just died. The news caused us great consternation, to use a term Mario himself engraved in his poem to Che. Mario was not only a great writer and a great friend in solidarity, but also a tireless worker of the Casa de las Americas -a task to which he would also bring his beloved Luz- ever since his first visit when he participated as a jury of the Casa's Prize for Literature.

He became a member of the Cooperation Committee of the Casa's magazine and later found the Center for Literary Research in 1967. He worked for many intense years at the Casa and helped to shape its essence, which it maintains today. Casa de las Americas has published several of his
titles and released recordings of his poetry recitals.

In a sad coincidence, Mario leaves us when Casa de las Americas is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Nevertheless, his voice, his memory, is books and that other great work of his, the Casa itself, remain with us.

(Lamenta Casa de las Américas muerte de Mario Benedetti)

Homage to Martí in anniversary 114 of his fall in combat

San Antonio de los Baños,may 19. The fall in combat of José Martí in Dos Ríos, had happened for 114 years, it is remembered in the Martian Forest of the Ariguanabo, where are placed today floral offerings by the date.

The historical Dos Ríos can in fact be observed in this place represented to the end of a journey of 194 kilometers and 38 days, which begins with the landing of Martí next to Maximum Gómez and other patriots with Beaches of Cajobabo, April 11 1895.

The mark is represented by wooden stumps, where the 27 camps and an image of him picked up in campaign clothes, as well as the delivery to him of bigger General's grades and the meeting of The Marjoram, next to the Generalissimo and the Place General Lieutenant Antonio Maceo.

His memories captured in the Forest, center badge of the Society José Martí, is the 54 vegetable species mentioned by the Cuban National Hero in its Newspaper of Campaign, and the Tribune of Our America erected in stones.

Open one day like today, 15 years ago, by Rafael Rodríguez Ortiz, that institution constitutes homage paradigm to the Teacher, and it is visited every year by national people's thousands and desirous foreigners of knowing on its life and work, and other aspects of the history of Cuba.
(Félix Milián)