Peru and Cuba mark 50 years of restoration of relations

Lima, Jul 8 (Prensa Latina) Peru and Cuba celebrate this Friday 50 years of the restoration of their diplomatic relations, whose development registers important milestones of fraternity, solidarity and mutual respect.

The 50th anniversary is celebrated with the laying of wreaths in front of the monument erected in memory of Cuban and Peruvian hero Leoncio Prado, who fought for Cuba’s independence and later gave his life for his homeland in the so-called War of the Pacific.

A conference on the anniversary will be held at the Inca Garcilaso Cultural Center of the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the speakers will discuss several aspects of the bilateral ties.

After more than a decade of disruption due to the US policy of isolating Cuba, the governments of both countries signed the full restoration of their official ties on July 8, 1972, when General Juan Velasco Alvarado was in power in Peru.

Lima and Havana thus resumed a relationship whose roots go back to the recognition of the Republic of Cuba in Arms by President Jose Balta, who governed between 1866 and 1872, in a context of fervent solidarity with the independence cause of the island.

The solidarity marked another milestone in the friendship between the two peoples, when Peruvian Foreign Minister Raul Porras Barrenechea, against the instructions of his government, opposed to the condemnation and isolation of the island by the United States in retaliation for its socialist option, during the OAS Foreign Ministers’ Conference held in Costa Rica, in January 1960.