As one of the mandates of the law on the name and figure of the Commander in Chief, the Fidel Castro Ruz Center, an institution dedicated to the study and dissemination of his thought and work, was inaugurated in Havana on Thursday, announced the Communist Party of Cuba.
The institution's birth is the result of Law 123 approved by the National Assembly of People's Power, of Cuba, on December 27, 2016. By law, it is prohibited to use Fidel Castro's name in squares, streets and other monuments. The Center was created under a provision, on an exceptional basis, to create a place for the study of his life's work and thought, that would bear his name.
Within the framework of the fifth anniversary of the death of the Cuban revolutionary leader, the inaugural ceremony will take place in the Turquino amphitheater of the institution itself, which will be the primary national activity for the anniversary.
The Children's Theater Company La Colmenita is expected to perform, with a unique staging for this occasion. The inauguration of the Center was postponed from last August due to the health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
We, the revolutionaries must not only read #Fidel; necessarily we have to study it and multiply dissemination of their ideas; they contain the purest of the current universal and Cuban revolutionary thought. Hard job has the future Center for Studies of #FidelCastro. #Cuba pic.twitter.com/G3tjZlA0Uc
— Jesús Lorenzo Reyes (@matrixterrible) October 9, 2019
During the day, other tribute activities were announced, including a cultural cantata "Fidel is Cuba," by young people from the Mariana de Gonitch Singing Academy and its professional company, Las Voces, under the direction of lyric singer Hugo Oslé. They were the first to honor the Cuban historical leader at his tombstone in the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery, in Santiago de Cuba, in 2016.
In the afternoon, another group of young people will make a pilgrimage along the central 23rd Avenue of the Cuban capital to deposit a symbolic Granma yacht in the waters of the Havana seafront.
This is also the anniversary of the departure from Mexico of that vessel that brought Fidel Castro and his comrades from that nation in 1956. The event marked the start of the final stage of the war against the corrupt and murderous dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
This pilgrimage began as a tradition hours after the death of the historical leader in 2016.