Wreaths from Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro and President of the Council of State and Minister, Army General Raul Castro, escorted the coffin of poet Cintio Vitier, who died Thursday in Havana at the age of 88.

  Marti's Program Office director Armando Hart, vice presidents of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba Graziella Pogolotti and Nancy Morejon, Cuban Music Institute president Abel Acosta, and Monsignor Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, among other figures, also paid tribute to Vitier.

Teacher of several generations of Cubans, along with his wife Fina Garcia Marruz, and leader of an outstanding family of academics and artists, with Cintio, the Cuban culture loses one of its hardest and coherent mainstays.

Vitier was a man that never doubted the homeland's vital decisions, astute essayist and narrator, represented the honest values of the island's poetry, trained youths, and important promoters of Marti's works.

He has received numerous awards, most notably the National Literature Prize in 1988, the Juan Rulfo Award in 2002, the title of Officer of Arts and Letters in France, and the medal of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba.