BY FRANCISCO PICADO
MANAGUA, Nicaragua-One hundred people attended a fund-raising party here to help finance the establishment of the
Martí-Darío Cultural Center. It was hosted by activists
of the Committee in Solidarity with Cuba, based in the
neighborhood of Bello Horizonte.
The purpose of the center, named after the Cuban independence fighter José Martí and Nicaragua's national poet, Rubén Darío, "is to become a place where people can find out what is going on in socialist Cuba and to facilitate the efforts of all those who do work in solidarity with Cuba," said Josefina Mojica, member of the local committee and head of the new project.
"I'm committed to contribute because Cuba has been helping us since well before the triumph of the 1979 revolution," said Bayardo Altamirano, a founding member of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and current vice-rector of the National School of Engineering.
"I personally had to go into exile many times and Cuba always gave us refuge. We received education and training in Cuba," said Altamirano about his participation in the Sandinista-led revolutionary struggle in the 1960s and 1970s. He was in Havana during the U.S....sponsored 1961 mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs and joined tens of thousands of revolutionary students, workers, and peasants in the defense of Havana.
In addition to many delegates from the Fifth Meeting of the Peoples of the Americas and the Caribbean, there were activists from different Cuba solidarity committees in the city as well as some union activists and youth from the neighborhood.