Event on Fidel on 22nd anniversary of the Battle of Ideas Museum.

The investigative event Fidel Forever Among Us marked the activities for the 22nd anniversary of the Museum to the Batalla de  Ideas, founded by the eternal Commander in Chief on July 14th, 2001.

María Teresa Clark, president of the Cardenas branch of the Union of Historians of Cuba, was among the speakers at the activity that paid tribute to the man who led the fight for the return to the homeland of the child Elián González Brotons, kidnapped for seven months in the United States by the extreme right wing in Miami.

The Museum to the Battle of Ideas arose from the need to set up a place where testimonies of the struggle led by the Cuban people, who did not cease until they saw the little boy descend in his father’s arms from the plane that brought him back on June the 28th, 2000, were preserved.

In the center, among those exhibited and stored, there are more than 3,932 treasured pieces, most of them documents, due to the political-ideological character of a site guardian of evidence related to the kidnapping, claim and return of Elian, and other valuable materials, bequeathed to the present and future of the nation.

One cannot fail to mention the accusing Martí (similar to the one in the Anti-Imperialist Tribune), the first thing one sees upon entering the museum, nor the silver cross and marquis that the Reverend Joan Brown Campbell -fundamental in the struggle for Elián’s return- took off, so that Juan Miguel could give it to the child when he had him with him.

The installation gathers memorable graphics such as that of the North American Indians who traveled to Cuba and offered him what they could, a magical-religious mass so that when he arrived in the United States, the roads would be opened to the man he was rightfully claiming. The birch branches used in the ceremony are found there.

A diary of the anti-terrorist fighter Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo that recalls part of the fighter’s stay in Angola is also jealously guarded. He traveled to the brother country on July 14th, coinciding with the later date of the museum’s creation.

Since its opening, the A la Batalla de Ideas Museum has five permanent exhibition halls located on the second floor, where documents, computer graphics, images and testimonies of the dispute between Cuba and the U.S. are exhibited.

The building, one of the oldest in Cárdenas, is a cultural complex that houses on its second floor a conference room and a computer room, currently disabled, and on the third floor, the Rubén Martínez Villena library, which has more than nine thousand volumes, with the most updated bibliography, encyclopedias and multimedia on science, technology, arts and sexuality, all of which are open to the public.

On December 6, the date of the beginning of what is known in Cuba as the Battle of Ideas, Elián González said: «As our President Miguel Díaz-Canel has said, we have a Revolution that is not perfect, but it is up to us to make it better. And no one is going to come to undermine what we have».

Written by Eva Luna Acosta Armiñán.