Cubans Recall 150 Years of the Execution of 8 Medicine Students

In Cuba, hundreds of young people marched on Saturday to remember eight medicine students killed by the Spanish colonialist government in 1871.

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The march departed from the iconic University of Havana to the Monument to the eight medicine students in the Old Havana neighborhood. 

Similar parades took place in other cities, such as Guisa, in the eastern Granma province, where 200 students from the Medical Sciences Faculty arrived at the emblematic Braulio Curuneaux National Monument after walking 17 km. 

In Santa Clara, students chanted patriotic slogans to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the unjust execution by a Spanish firing squad.

The meme reads, "In a heartfelt march, Young people across the country pay tribute and remember 150 years after that cruel act that took the lives of 8 innocent young people that sad Nov. 27, 1871."

Accused of having scratched Don Gonzalo de Castañon's tomb, a group of eight young medicine students were shot on Nov. 27, 1871. Don Gonzalo was a famous Spanish journalist who fiercely opposed Cuban independence.

Years later, when the son of the Hispanic journalist exhumated his father's remains, he declared that the coffin was intact and that no irreverence had occurred.

"Our youth and the people will be marching because our heroes and martyrs are neither forgotten nor dead," Cuba's Youth Communist Union (UJC) declared.