Exhibition by Gerardo, one of the Cuban Five, Inaugurated in Ecuador

Havana, Cuba, Sept 17.- Lenin Moreno, Vice-president of Ecuador, inaugurated in Quito an exhibition of caricatures by Cuban hero Gerardo Hernandez on Friday; which has become a demand for his release from prison and that of his four fellow countrymen.

In the presence of many personalities and Latin American ambassadors invited for the occasion, met at the Culture Ministry of the Ecuadorian capital, a message sent by Gerardo from his prison in Victorville, California, was read.

The Five have turned to humor, painting and poetry “to free ourselves”, “to come out for a moment” from within these walls where we have been unfairly kept for 13 years, says Gerardo in his letter, the Prensa Latina news agency reported.

On behalf of them, I’d like to thank you for your support for our cause for justice, says the Cuban antiterrorist hero, the case of which, along to those of Rene Gonzalez, Fernando Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero and Ramon Labañino, was explained by Cuban ambassador to Ecuador, Jorge Rodriguez.

This denunciation was completed by the speech of Ecuadorian Culture Minister Erika Sylva, while inaugurating the exhibition "El amor y el humor todo lo pueden" (Love and humor can do anything), during which she recalled the support of many Nobel Prize winners and famous intellectuals from around the world for the release of these Cuban patriots.

Vice-president Moreno highlighted that these five heroes, in spite of the difficult situation they’re going through, maintain their spirits high enough to talk about -with optimism- love, freedom and Revolution.

In Brazil, “Los ultimos soldados de la Guerra Fría” (The Last Soldiers of the Cold War”, by local writer Fernando Morais, has become a best-seller, in moments in which its main characters, the five Cuban antiterrorists, have already served 13 years of unjust incarceration in US federal prisons.

A Salvadorian bodyguard contracted by the ultra-right of Cuban origin to place bombs in Cuba; a pilot at the service of Havana who lived for almost a decade infiltrated in Miami; and writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an unusual messenger between Cuban leader Fidel Castro and the

then President of the US, Bill Clinton, are characters of the book, of which 20,000 copies have been sold in three weeks.

The text, to be launched in Spanish and English and that will be adapted to cinema, discloses the activities of the “Red Avispa” (Wasp Network), composed of 14 Cuban agents which, between 1990 and 1998, infiltrated extreme right organizations in Miami to reveal their plans against the Caribbean island.

The publication also includes the most important aspects of relations between Cuba and the United States over the last two decades.

Morais told the French AFP news agency that he had the intention of writing the text since the arrest of The Five in l998, for which he waited 10 years until Havana authorized him access to classified material. (ACN).

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