Venezuelan and Cuban historians have brought to the present the memorable handshake that for some was not at all fortuitous, but was preceded by innumerable historic events in time that, centuries and years later, made them merge in a close and lasting friendship.

From the infinite love, attachment and devotion of each to the other, they have marked the path of a new era and gave identity to a new type of cooperative relationship between peoples and governments such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples’ Trade Treaty.

Bolivarian University Rector Sandra Oblitas was grateful to have hosted this meeting to commemorate an event that occurred on December 13, 1994, which “we did not know how important it could be” and demonstrated the vision of those two immense men.

She affirmed that the profound gaze of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution saw there on the slab of the airport in Havana, Cuba, “a friend, a cameraman, a brother with whom he could build that profound and new revolution that began in Venezuela after that meeting.”

It meant that in these times of stalking of our homeland and our American Revolution, from which Cuba is not exempt, we can meet and unite in “that spirit and necessary search to continue resisting and winning.”

The Cuban historian and president of the José Martí Cultural Society, Venezuela chapter, Rubén Rodríguez, quoted Commander Ernesto Che Guevara when he predicted in early 1960 that the center of the continental Revolution “would very probably shift toward the Venezuelan nation.”

Rodríguez pointed out that the meeting we are holding today was a “germinal encounter whose multiple causes we continue to explore” and recalled that those sleepless hours of the Havana night were the birth “of the second independence of the Americas claimed by José Martí.”

The master in contemporary history, Abel Aguilera, contextualized via videoconference from the Fidel Castro Ruz Center, the moment when Fidel and Chávez embraced each other and stated that in its more than 60 years of existence, the Cuban Revolution has enjoyed the sincere friendship of countless friends.

In this regard, he quoted Fidel when he said, “Hugo Chávez is Cuba’s best friend,” and pointed out that today we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the first embrace of two of the main independence and anti-imperialist leaders in Latin American history.

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