The 42nd Caribbean Festival, to be held on July 3 to 9 in this southeastern province and expected to be attended by some 600 delegates from Martinique, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and the Dominican Republic, among other countries, will strengthen friendship ties between Cuba and Mexico.

The event will venerate the Mexican celebration of life and death, a festivity inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2003.

Orlando Vergéz, director of the Casa del Caribe, in this city, said that the event will contribute to strengthen the fraternal, cultural and educational relations between the two nations and thanked the Communist Party of Cuba, the government and several institutions for their efforts to organize the Festival despite the country’s current difficulties.

Featured in the program are the usual parades and workshops, the 3rd World Congress on Death, galas, book launchings, the presentation of the TV series La Fiesta de los que nunca mueren, and the exhibition of 25 engravings by Jose Guadalupe Posada, famous for his illustrations of calacas or skulls.

Likewise, Casa del Caribe deputy director Daniela Anaya announced the production of a special edition of the rum La Guantanamera in bottles bearing an image of the poster that represents the Fiesta del Fuego.