Montevideo - The Coordinator of Support for the Cuban Revolution in Uruguay welcomed the Cuban antiterrorist fighter Ramon Labañino, who thanked the Uruguayan people for their solidarity for the release of the Cuban Five, as they were known internationally.

Labañino attended a meeting that highlighted the coincidences and political visions between the two peoples along history, including the links between Jose Marti and Enrique Estrazulas, who proposed the Cuban Apostle to be Uruguay's consul in New York in 1887.

"This meeting seemed to be impossible a few years ago to give you a hug personally," said Jorge Mazzarovich, a member of the Coordinator.

"It is not impossible because we did not have confidence in your strength, we never doubted about that, Ramon," said Mazzarovich, who was Uruguay's ambassador to Cuba. He mentioned his meetings with the relatives of the five antiterrorist fighters.

He recalled the period of persecution and imprisonment for several years by the dictatorship, "never like yours", because "you were in the prisons of the empire". We never either lost sight of that or underestimated it, he noted.

We learned that solidarity is something that "strengthens who receives it and reaffirms who offers it," said Mazzarovich, who is also a member of Frente Amplio (Broad Front), when highlighting that the demands for the release of The Five "became a part of the struggles of the Uruguayan people."

Mazzarovich noted that the Uruguayan people are highly grateful of the Cuban Revolution "for everything it has done for them," and recalled how Cuba provide asylum to political exiles during the dictatorship and dozens of Uruguayans have graduated as doctors in Cuba.

Labañino, who was accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth Palmeiro, Cuban Ambassador Mercedes Sotolongo and other Cuban diplomatic officials in Montevideo, noted that since they arrived in this country, "they have felt a scale of emotions."

The Cuban hero thanked, on behalf of his brothers Gerardo Hernandez, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez, the Uruguayan people for their solidarity during the long years of imprisonment in the United States.

That gratitude, he noted, is eternal, because what we share today would have not been possible without solidarity. "We never doubted about the solidarity of our people or the world," he stressed.

For her part, the Cuban ambassador noted that there are indestructible ties between Uruguay and Cuba, and repeated that the release of The Five was the result of the Cuban people's resistance and the solidarity of all peoples in the world.

At the end of the meeting, at the venue of the trade union PIT-CNT, Asdrubal Pereira, another member of the Coordinator, granted Ramon a symbolic photo of Ernesto Che Guevara and Salvador Allende at the Auditorium of the University of the Republic, on August 17, 1961.