Guantanamo, Cuba.- Researchers, artists and intellectuals celebrating the Day of the French Cultural Presence in Guantánamo on Thursday committed to preserving the legacy of French culture in this eastern Cuban region.

Participants in the meeting favored protecting and making the ruins of the French coffee farms, a World Heritage Site and one of the last material vestiges of the French influence on coffee production in Cuba, more visible.

Jorge Nuñez, president of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) in Guantanamo, said that art in eastern Cuba came exactly from the cultivation of coffee.

For her part, the Cuban researcher Maria Elena Orozco pointed out that preserving, knowing and publishing on the French culture’s legacy and influence on construction was not something casual, so it must be preserved and published.

The event was sponsored by the UNEAC branch in the territory, the Directorate of Culture, the Alto Serra coffee company, the universities of Guantanamo and Oriente, and the French Alliance in Santiago de Cuba.

Delegates debated the influence of the French culture on architecture and the socio-cultural life of the territory, visited the ruins of the coffee farms and other places to promote French culture.