Chavez Donates Guayabera to Sancti Spiritus

Taken from CUBADEBATE

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez donated a shirt to the Socio-Cultural project La Guayabera, from the central Cuban city of Sancti Spiritus.  The garment will be handed over next October 24 in the headquarters of the Union of Writers and Artists in this city.

The long-sleeved shirt, which was a present given to him by his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, was sent to Cuba together with some photos of Chavez dressed in the red shirt in his “Alo, Presidente” TV program broadcasted from Caucagua, last October 4.

“This program, the one with my very red guayabera, has been meant to give new strEngth to our Barrio Adentro mission, which is today a supreme example of the Cuba-Venezuela unity in the construction of socialism”, wrote Chavez in a letter sent to Cuban journalist Ciro Bianchi Ross and his wife Mayra Gómez Fariñas, promoters of the project.

Other eleven shirts will be also sent to Sancti Spiritus like those of late Shaffick Handal, historical leader of the El Salvador’s Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation  and Filiberto Ojeda, leader of the Puerto Rican Machetero Movement who was assassinated by the FBI in his house in San Juan. Also to be donated is a guayabera owned by Literature Nobel Prize Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias,  donation that coincides with the 110 birthday anniversary of the author of El señor presidente (Mister president).

Shirts will be also received from Cuban doctors Rodrigo Alvarez Cambras, Gustavo Kouri and Alberto Nodarse along with Cuban Olympic medalists Ana Fidela Quirot and Enrique Figuerola. Likewise, similar shirts will be donated by Perfecto Romero, photographer of Camilo and Che columns, Cuban reciter Luis Carbonell and late song writer and singer Compay Segundo.

Over 40 guayabera shirts have been collected so far from outstanding people from Cuban political, social and cultural sectors, including the one dressed by Cuban Commander in Chief Fidel Castro when he appeared for the first time in a public ceremony not wearing his historic green uniform. It was in Cartagena de Indias during the celebration of the IV Ibero-American summit.

The current collection –which is permanently exhibited in the local Provincial Museum of History- is made up of donations from Raul Castro, Vilma Espín, Juan Almeida, Melba Hernandez, Alicia Alonso, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Miguel Barnet and cardinal Jaime Ortega, among other personalities.