SANTIAGO – A monument in honor of Cuba’s national hero, Jose Marti, was inaugurated on Monday in the Yungay neighborhood of downtown Santiago, with a ceremony headed by the Cuban ambassador to Chile, Jose Curbelo, and attended by hundreds of people.

The speaker of the Chilean legislature, Fidel Espinoza, along with the director of the Chilean Cuban Institute of Culture, Magaly Matus, and Cuban sculptor Jose Villa Soberon, who created the monumental statue, also attended the ceremony, as did many members of Congress, city councilors and political leaders.

The monument cast in bronze is a life-sized representation of the Cuban poet, journalist and revolutionary philosopher, while engraved on its base are a number of quotations by Jose Marti and other intellectuals, including the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral, winner of the 1945 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The sculptor told reporters that he created the statue “with pleasure and commitment,” and thanked the smelters and other artists who helped with the work, now installed at Portales Park in the Yungay neighborhood, some 2 kilometers (over a mile) west of La Moneda Palace, seat of the Chilean government.

The Cuban ambassador to Chile, Adolfo Curbelo, spoke at the ceremony of Marti’s career, his work and his unifying vision for Latin America.