Vol. 78/No. 21      June 2, 2014

Guerrero is one of the Cuban Five arrested in Miami in 1998 on trumped-up charges of espionage. The paintings were created as part of the commemoration of 15 years of incarceration.

“In Cuba you discover that the Five are representative of the fighting spirit of a whole people,” said Loukia Konstantinou, who was in Havana for the inaugural exhibit of Guerrero’s prison paintings at the National Museum of Fine Arts in April.

“With this exhibit we want to get the case of the Cuban Five known more widely in Greece,” Konstantinou said, speaking on behalf of the two Cuban solidarity committees organizing the tour here, the José Martí Cultural Association and Hasta La Victoria Siempre.

The Greek Solidarity Network; Soy Cubano, a Cuban residents association; the publishing house Diethnes Vima; and the Ernesto Art Café are also supporting the exhibit.

“The detention of the Five is an assault not only on them, but on Cuba as a whole, said Cuban Ambassador Osvaldo Cobacho Martínez, who was the featured speaker. “The frame-up of the Five and continued imprisonment of Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino and Antonio Guerrero, together with the U.S. blockade and other ongoing hostile acts by Washington, are part of a pattern of aggression that has continued since the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.”

“We consider the Five heroes for all of Latin America,” said Venezuelan Ambassador Frederic Farid Fernandez in a message sent to the meeting. “They are an example of resistance against the imperialist system of economic and political oppression.”

“This exhibit has traveled to many countries and to many states of the USA,” said Natasha Terlexi of the José Martí Cultural Association. “It has been shown at schools, libraries, cultural centers and union halls. There they touch people who experience exploitation, racism, police violence and imprisonment. By bringing the fight of the Cuban Five to working people we are gathering our own jurors to free them.”

The exhibit will go next to the town of Volos where the local chapter of the Greek Cuban Friendship Society is organizing a soccer match for the Five at a local stadium June 2. Then it will be shown at the town hall in the industrial town of Elefsina, the center of a nine-month steel strike in 2011-2012.

Chilean poet Jaime Svart and Kostas Sanidas, member of Hasta La Victoria Siempre and of the José Martí Cultural Association, read poetry by Guerrero and Labañino. Music by Cuban singer and guitar player Remy Mailan closed the event.
 
 
Related articles:
Harlem meeting: Fight to free Cuban 5 ‘near and dear to us’
Who Are the Cuban 5?
Exhibits of paintings by Antonio Guerrero
‘5 days for the Cuban 5’
 
 
 
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