SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- A total of 74 swimmers crossed the Matanzas Bay This Saturday, to commemorate the 98th birthday of dictator Fidel Castro, according to the official local press.
The contestants in the open water event set off from the old Port Authority towards the Playa del Tenis del Consejo Popular Playa. According to the radio station’s website Radio 26, the route was 2.5 kilometers.
First place was won by Alberto Javier Oliveros Pérez, an employee of the Telecommunications Company SA (ETECSA).
“Organized by the Los Cocodrilos del Tenis Open Water Club and the local government, the Matanzas Bay crossing encourages socializing among swimmers, while promoting physical exercise and healthy recreation in the summer,” the press reported.
This was the 54th edition of the event and was attended by swimmers aged between 12 and 82 years old.
The text, with a triumphalist tone, defines the journey as “a challenge to the human will to win, a feeling that was instilled in the various generations of Cubans by Commander in Chief Fidel, who defied his time and led a triumphant Revolution in January 1959.”
Matanzas Bay is the second deepest bay in Cuba, measuring 546 metres at its mouth and 14 kilometres (km) long by seven kilometres wide.
Tributes to Fidel in Matanzas
While Cubans face not only the critical situation of food shortages on a daily basis on the island, but also the serious problem of housing due to the lack of materials, bureaucratic obstacles and the diversion of available resources by the regime, among other daily obstacles, the government of Matanzas decided three years ago to erect a gigantic mural in homage to dictator Fidel Castro in a 13-story apartment block in that city.
The initiative was the work of Jesús Alberto Mederos Martínez, who came up with the idea of imitating Castro’s epaulette “as a confirmation that he continues his legacy and example.”
The work was done on the side of the Trece Plantas, one of the tallest buildings in the city, where Mederos painted two stripes, one red and one black, that imitate the dictator’s epaulette. The colors, in homage to the flag of the 26th of July Movement, were used by Fidel Castro in his military insignia.
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