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Vol. 73/No. 1      January 12, 2009

 
D.C. public library features Cuban Five art exhibit
 
BY SUSAN LAMONT  
WASHINGTON—About 90 people filled the second-floor lobby at the main Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library here December 17 for an evening of art, poetry, and music in support of the effort to free five Cuban revolutionaries unjustly imprisoned in this country for the past 10 years.

Cuba solidarity activists, students, workers, visitors to the library, staff from the Cuban Interests Section, and others attended the reception for an exhibit of drawings, paintings, and poetry by Antonio Guerrero on display at the library.

The exhibit, lasting through the end of December, is called “From My Altitude,” the title of a collection of poetry by Guerrero that has been published in both Spanish and English.

Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González, also known as the Cuban Five, have been locked up in U.S. prisons since their arrest by FBI agents in 1998. The five Florida residents had been monitoring right-wing Cuban American counterrevolutionary groups who have a record of organizing bombings and other murderous attacks on Cuba from U.S. soil with Washington’s complicity.

In a 2001 trial marked by violations of constitutional rights, the five men were convicted and given long sentences on frame-up charges that included conspiracy to commit espionage, failure to register as foreign agents, and—in the case of Hernández—conspiracy to commit murder. Guerrero, Hernández, and Labañino are serving life sentences. Fernando González was sentenced to 19 years in prison and René González to 15 years.

The event was chaired by longtime Cuba solidarity activist Shirley Pate, who began the program by reviewing the history of the case. Yanet Stable Cárdenas of the Cuban Interests Section and singer Luci Murphy read several of Guerrero’s poems, in Spanish and English respectively, with accompaniment from musicians Earl Richardson, Lorenz Wheatley, and Joe Kennedy.

Guerrero, who is locked up at the maximum-security federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, sent greetings to the event.

The exhibit includes a display case with books and pamphlets on Cuba and the Cuban Five distributed by Pathfinder Press.
 
 
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