ECLAC Expresses Condolences to the People and Government of Cuba over the Death of Former President Fidel Castro

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) expressed today its fraternal condolences and testimony of solidarity to the government and people of Cuba over the death of former President Fidel Castro Ruz.

In a letter signed by the Executive Secretary of ECLAC, Alicia Bárcena, the United Nations regional organization expressed its profound sadness over the death of Fidel Castro, “one of the giants in our shared history.”

“The current face of our continent has imprinted upon its features the traces of his presence, the timber of his voice, the colors of the dreams that he inspired,” Bárcena stated in her letter, adding that “it is impossible to try to understand the 20th Century in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the shared landscape in these early decades of the new millennium, without putting Fidel as a leading protagonist.”

ECLAC’s most senior representative recalled that “in times when indignity, daily subordination, rampant squalor and naturalized inequalities characterized the social landscape and the marginal position of Latin America and the Caribbean in the world, Fidel represented, in word and action, the tangible demonstration that another path was possible.”

She also underscored that the leader of the Cuban revolution “led an exercise of popular will that crystallized in a Cuba that has emerged as proof that it is possible to approach the challenges of the present and future without giving up the essential meaning of a national project that chose to put the comprehensive well-being of its citizens at the top of its priorities.”