CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

Raul Castro Attended Gala Marking Anniversary of Cuban Children and Youth Organizations.

CUBA, April 5, 2011.- President Raul Castro attended on Monday evening a political-cultural gala at Havana’s Karl Marx Theater to mark the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Jose Marti Pioneer Children’s Organization (OPJM) and the 49th of the Young Communist League (UJC), as well as the closing of the Fifth Congress of the OPJM.

During the gala, two paintings by artist Dausell Valdes dedicated to Raul and to the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, were presented to the head of state and government by the first secretary of the UJC, Liudmila Alamo Dueñas, and by the president of the OPJM, Yamile Ramos Cordero.

Also present in the gala was First Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, who accompanied Yamile in presenting the ‘Los zapaticos de rosa’ Award, created in 1989 by the OPJM to be granted to personalities and institutions excelling for their contribution to the education of the new generations.

Those receiving the award on this occasion were Maria Hortensia Rodriguez, a founder of the Ernesto Guevara Pioneer Children’s Central Palace; Dr. Jorge Gonzalez, rector of the University of Medical Sciences of Havana; singer-song writer Kiki Corona; Esther Hirtzel, director of the Animation Studios of the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC); and Eva Morejon, who has always contributed to the OPJM’s work.

Addressing participants in the gala, Olga Lidia Tapia, a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of Cuba’s Communist Party (PCC), referred to the present and future challenges that children and youth will have to face, including their instruction and formation of values to serve their people.

“In these days of the Congress, we feel this continuity that the new generations have to preserve and which will be demonstrated on April 16 during the people’s and military parade at Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución, where thousands of children and youths will show the invincible strength of Socialism and the ideas we defend, exactly 50 years after the victory over the Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion,” she said.

The gala included the performances of the Buena Fe duet and singers Liuba Maria Hevia and Lidis Lamoru, as well as dances by the Lizt Alfonso Children’s Ballet Company and students from art schools and from the Iberian American Center of the Decima (Ten-Syllable verses) and Impromptu Performance. (Cubaminrex-AIN)

<< Back