Santiago de Cuba, CUba.-President Raúl Castro deposited today the funerary urn with the ashes of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, in his last resting place at the St. Ifigenia cemetery of this city.
The sorrowful and emotional moment was accompanied by Dalia Soto del Valle, wife of Fidel, relatives and more than 40 international guests, friends of the Commander and personalities who attended the eve the act at the Antonio Maceo Square, according to the website Cubadebate.
After placing the lid of the niche, everything happens much faster. Bugle warning, National Anthem. Twenty-one gun artillery salute. A recording with Fidel’s voice giving us the concept of Revolution, said the website.
It was also known that those present, including the bodyguards and those who took care of the leader of the Revolution during his last years, deposited white roses in the base of the pantheon.
The line started with Raul and ends wuth Argentinean Diego Armando Maradona, and in between presidents Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Evo morales of Bolivia.
Other personalities present were Denis Sassou Nguesso of Congo, Malalu Teshome of Ethiopia, Alfred Marie-Jeanne of Martinica and the former presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, according to Cubadebate.
Protected by a plaque with the name Fidel, the urn is at the center of a polished rock of granite, weighing over two thousand 400 kilos original from the quarry Las Guasimas, east of Santiago de Cuba.
At the right of the mausoleum, there is a concrete wall where it is engraved the concept of Revolution in golden letters, as it was expressed by Fidel in a speech delivered May 1st, 2000 which Cubans endorsed in these days of mourning.
Near the pantheon in the St. Ifigenia Cemetery are located the tombs of the Father of the Homeland, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, of Mariana Grajales, mother of Antonio Maceo, and 32 generals of the War of Independence against Spanish colonialism, among other heroes and martyrs fallen in more than a century and a half of struggles to liberate Cuba.