Santiago de Cuba, July 4 (Prensa Latina) Scholars from Colombia highlighted here today the links to the Caribbean, a reality dodged for a long time.

During the Colloquium “The Caribbean Linking Us”, as part of the 33rd Fiesta del Fuego (Fire Festival), running in this city on July 3-9, historian Gustavo Adolfo Bell, who is Colombian Ambassador to Cuba, said definitive integration is yet to be achieved in the region, and festivals like this are important for this purpose because it defends the rapprochement of Caribbean people through culture.

In his lecture Bringing People Closer: For an Inclusive Caribbean, he evoked passages by his fellow countryman, also Caribbean, the Nobel Literature Prize laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who rediscovered himself in his origins in African trips during which he saw similarities and customs from his childhood.

Bell also confessed personal yearnings during his over-two-year mission in Cuba, where he identifies himself with food, sports, music and other memories of his childhood, which confirms the validity of crossing the sea and look to the other side for a new trip to one’s own self.

Meanwhile, researcher Alberto Abello said that the books about the Caribbean fail to include that northern Colombia belongs to the Caribbean region, a reality that intellectuals in that nation are trying to change.

With his lecture The Colombian Caribbean within the Greater Caribbean, Abello opened the panel on history, culture and society in that coastal area that is the center of discussions in this 33rd Fire Festival.

Ambassador of Caribbean countries are attending along Cubans and delegations from some 27 countries the academic debates and the broad ranging artistic program of this annual Festival of Caribbean cultures.

The Fire Festival next year will be dedicated to Suriname.