With various online activities, the 118th birthday of national poet Nicolás Guillen, author of numerous poems, including the world famous "Songoro Cosongo", was celebrated in Cuba this Friday.
The activities had the different digital platforms associated with the Foundation that bears the poet's name, the Ministry of Culture (MINCULT) and the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), in order to respect the sanitary measures adopted in the country because of the Covid-19.
Those commemorations included an audiovisual based on an artistic project by Cuban singer Osdalgia and actor Jorge Enrique Caballero, produced by Mincult and the Foundation, as well as live performances, poem readings, research and creation competitions, radio shows and virtual panels in the social network Facebook.
A press release made by the organizers of this tribute indicates that the 90th anniversary celebrations of Motivos de son have also been continued, a text published for the first time in 1930 in the Diario de la Marina newspaper.
Born in Camagüey, in the central region of Cuba, Guillen settled in Havana from a young age, where he developed his vast poetic work, mainly Afro-Cuban poetry.
As a mulatto, he vindicates black culture within the processes of miscegenation and transculturation, something that characterizes Latin America and the Caribbean, in particular.
He presided over the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) from its foundation until 1985 and was awarded numerous national and international prizes, including the National Prize for Literature (1983), National Poetry Ricardo Miró (Panama, 1978), World from Poetry Adam (India, 1983).
This deserved tribute was also joined by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (Cosude) and the Foundation's subsidiaries, in the country and in the Dominican Republic.
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