Matanzas make honor to Jose A. Echeverria

66 years after the takeover of the Radio Reloj station and the assault on the Presidential Palace, the young people of Cárdenas paid tribute to the student leader José Antonio Echeverría Bianchi, in his birthplace, where extensive repairs are in progress.

Milagros Muñiz Rodríguez, director of the José Antonio Echeverría Bianchi Birthplace Museum, an institution with the category of National Monument, told the Cuban News Agency that the works will allow the house to look decorated for next October 10, when it will be half a century its declaration as a museum.

The main tasks, divided into several stages, are aimed at improving the condition of the roof, damaged by persistent leaks, and the carpentry, because light construction maintenance was carried out previously but did not resolve the main difficulties, he said.

Conservation will also be given to the family car, currently sheltered in the patio, which constitutes a very striking piece for those who visit the eclectic-style house with a neoclassical base, possessing typical elements of 19th-century Cuban housing and with North American influence.

Muñiz Rodríguez pointed out that the museum will maintain its usual structure, with rooms dedicated to architecture, the family past, and different stages of the life and revolutionary trajectory of Echeverría Bianchi from his childhood, as well as objects of the martyr Fructuoso Rodríguez and a synthesis of the history of Cuban student organizations.

After dedicating a floral offering to the student leader, the people took part in the traditional pilgrimage from the birthplace to the cemetery where his remains rest, in a day presided over by Susely Morfa González, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in Matanzas, and Mario Sabines Lorenzo , governor of the province.

Carema Sarabia Águila, leader of the University Student Federation, expressed that a few days after the celebration, last December, of the X Congress of that centennial organization founded by Echeverría Bianchi, the more than 100,000 Cuban university students demonstrate with daily actions the validity of his legacy

Translated by Casterman Medina de Leon