MONTERREY, Nuevo León, Mexico—Nearly 200 people—university professors, students, workers, and others—gathered here October 15-17 to discuss the political legacy and relevance today of the interrelated 19th century revolutionary democratic struggles in Mexico, Cuba, and the United States.

The International Conference on Martí, Juárez and Lincoln in the Heart of Our America took its name from three major figures in the history of the Americas: Cuban independence fighter José Martí; Benito Juárez, who led the Mexican bourgeois revolutionary forces in a war against the landed oligarchy and Catholic Church hierarchy, and then defeated Napoleon III’s attempt to install a European monarch on the people of Mexico; and Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States during the revolutionary war that abolished slavery on U.S. soil. Participants came from Mexico, the United States, Cuba, Canada, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.

The conference featured keynote presentations by Armando Hart Dávalos (inset), one of the historic leaders of the Cuban Revolution, and panel discussion on a wide range of topics.

—STEVE WARSHELL