Banjul, Dec 14th. – The Cuban ambassador to the Gambia, Rubén G. Abelenda, paid tribute to the African ancestors of his people, during a visit to the Slavery Memorial in the Juffureh/Albreda community, of this West African nation.
After three hours of boating on the beautiful and mighty Gambia River, the diplomat from the largest of the Antilles took a tour of Juffureh/ Albreda, considered the home of KuntaKinteh, and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.
«Never again,» reads an anti-slavery sculpture erected at the entrance of the aforementioned community located in the North Bank Division, where its residents gave a warm welcome to the Cuban ambassador.
Abelenda expressed to several of his hosts, who spontaneously accompanied him during his stay, that African blood runs through the veins of all his compatriots from the slaves who were brought in subhuman conditions to the Americas by the colonizers.
He expressed that his country will eternally thank this continent where many of its sons and daughters fought and gave their lives for the independence of Cuba in the 19th century, after being liberated by the Father of the Homeland of the Caribbean nation, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, in 1868.
Prior to his visit to the modest but very impressive Memorial, which shows the cruelties of slavery, the diplomat made a stop at James Island, known as KuntaKinteh Island.
They say that Kinteh, the protagonist of the famous television series «Raíces», based on the book Roots: The Saga of an American Family, by Alex Haley, was taken to the Americas on a slave ship from that island, where the traces persist from the horrors of racial segregation.
"An Island on a Continent" 