‘Scuse me while I miss this guy.
Add another high achievement to Chavecito’s already impressive list of gains. He’s been given a place of honor on a mountaintop in Cuba:
Today a group of Cubans and Venezuelans placed a bust of the late president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, on Caracas Peak, in the Sierra Maestra of southeastern Cuba, considered one of the highest elevations on the island.
The sculpture is the work of artist Andrés González, who modelled it out of resin and glass fibre.
In front of the two-metre-high pedestal with the bust of Chávez is a plaque with his phrase: “Those who love their country, come with me.”
The figure of the Bolivarian Revolution’s leader, who died on March 5 in a Caracas hospital, was placed next to a bust of the Liberator, Simón Bolívar, by the same sculptor, at 1,234 metres above sea level.
Among the participants at the tribute were the Venezuelan ambassador to Cuba, Edgardo Ramírez, and René González, one of the five Cubans arrested in 1998 in Florida, where they were monitoring the actions of violent anti-Cuban groups in Miami.
On various mountain peaks of the Sierra Maestra, there are other busts, such as that of the Cuban national hero, José Martí, the mythical Argentine-Cuban guerrilla commander Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, considered the father of the nation by Cubans.
The Sierra Maestra was the principal staging point of the Cuban Revolution, which Fidel Castro led, starting in December 1956, against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and which concluded with the revolutionary triumph of January 1, 1959.
Translation mine.
Caracas Peak figures in Che Guevara’s Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, which should be required reading in history class, and hold pride of place on any leftist/Latin Americanist’s bookshelf. Here’s a map of the Sierra Maestra showing its location:
You’ll find Caracas Peak between and just below the R and the A of “SIERRA”.
