Not one minute of silence for Benedetti!

The Venezuelan president recalled that "he also timely defended the joys and hopes of his own people, responding to the acute consciousness that was embodied in his work as a fine understanding of the reality of the common man and woman."

Following, we reproduce the full text:
Miraflores, May 18, 2009

The Bolivarian Government of Venezuela, joins the pain that seizes the world today, before the physical disappearance of our compatriot, poet, friend and comrade Mario Benedetti.

In this hour of sorrow, we want to express our deepest sympathy word to the brotherly people of Uruguay and the world, by the departure of the sensitive writer and poet who was in life a man committed to the cause of humanity. His pen, his ideas, his merit as a militant of the word will be printed forever in the memory of our South American People.

Men do not trascend but by their works and the good they leave upon their land, in this sense, the lessons of companion Benedetti are infinite, we've learned with him, among many other things, not to let our eyelids drop, heavy as trials, a sentence that summarizes his makings, because he lived ever vigilant of his surroundings and deeply committed to the reality of all the peoples of our Americas.

With prophetic words, he told misfortunes and fears, pointed the terrible, but also timely defended the joys and hopes of his own people, responding to that acute consciousness that was embodied in his work as a fine understanding of the reality of the common man and woman in our people, this is the legacy that transcends, and at the same time, the comfort that he leaves for us.

Ali Primera, another singer of the People, said it with certainty: those who die for life can not be called dead, that is why we do not say goodbye, only "until always" to a companion, comrade and friend of the whole world, who raised his word as a combat weapon, and turned his verses into songs to life and hope. This way he will be remembered in the future.

May go to his family, friends and loved ones, our full solidarity along with the fraternal feeling of who will always carry in his heart to a so much loved being as comrade Mario Benedetti, to whom we will honor reading with revolutionary passion and letting the world know that the South also exists.

Now more than ever, Maestro, our mission is and will be to Defend the Joy: to defend it from the stunning and the nightmares / of the neutral and the neutrons / of the sweet infamies / and the serious diagnoses.

Not one minute of silence for Benedetti! All the millions of applauses and chants in honor of his example and work!

RNV