With his gait, tired for the years, marked by the life, he walked our city, and was returning repeatedly to Camagüey not to allow to die his own history.

Nicolás Guillén Batista was born here on July 10th, 1902; the death, after long illness, surprised him in Havana, 87 years later, on July 16th, 1989.

His literary production was around two big topics: the exaltation of the black and the social situation, and thanks to the intrinsic value of his work, the problems of the black race acquired relief and category inside the ambience of the literature of the Spanish language.

And the fact is that Guillén belong to his people; that´s why he was appointed National Poet of Cuba.

In 1982, the IIIrd Congress of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, declared that Nicolás Guillén means the highest current example of life and creative work, for his unbreakable loyalty to the patriotic and revolutionary tradition of the Cuban Culture.

He expressed, with vigorous artistic genius, the sensitivity, the character, the historical process and the combative spirit of a people, of a geographical ambience and of an epoch.

This way his people remembers him, like the man who came from a modest Camagüeyan street.

This way he is admired by his people, like the poet of the black and of the poor person, the one that dreamed with equality, he who sang to his ground and to his people.

Translated by BA in English Language, Manuel Barrera Téllez

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