The award was handed to D’Escoto by Cuban First VP Jose Ramon Machado Ventura - with whom the Nicaraguan priest and revolutionary had met minutes before – during a solemn ceremony at the Jose Marti Memorial in Havana.

D’Escoto said he felt somewhat uncomfortable because he was being granted an award for doing what any priest and militant of the Sandinista National Liberation Front should do. He also mentioned solidarity as the main virtue in a critical moment like the one the world lives today due to selfishness, greed and other anti-values of the dominating culture.

“I humbly accept this award with a commitment to continue fighting to defend this people, their Revolution and all the just causes,” said D’Escoto and added that it was even a greater honor because “it comes from the sister and heroic Cuba, a paradigm of solidarity and a bright torch of hope.”

Among those attending the ceremony were relatives of the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters who remain unjustly imprisoned in the United States since 1998 for monitoring anti-Cuba extremist groups in South Florida.

On this occasion, D’Escoto ratified that next September 14th, during his farewell speech as president of the 63rd period of sessions of the UN General Assembly, he will speak of the case of Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez – internationally known as the Cuban Five -, which he regarded as a terrible injustice that needs to be corrected immediately.

Visibly moved, he expressed his gratitude for living in times of the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro and for “witnessing the best times of Latin America, when the dream of Simon Bolivar is coming true and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) grows.”




 

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