Havana, September 10 (RHC) -– Keith Ellis, Professor Emeritus of the University of Toronto, Canada, and a defender of the Cuban Revolution, has received the Friendship Medal given by the Council of State of the Republic of Cuba.

The ceremony was held at the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), with which Ellis and other intellectuals of his generation have been linked for years.

Fernando Gonzalez, Vice President of ICAP, presented Ellis with the medal.  Gonzalez thanked the Jamaican researcher for his participation in the 10th International Colloquium of Solidarity with The Five and against Terrorism, scheduled for September 11th and 12th  in Havana.

Born in Jamaica in 1935, Keith Ellis is a Professor of Merit of the University of Havana; he’s a member of the Cuban Academy of Language and an honorary member of the Association of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC), as well as of its Association of Literary Translation.

Among his numerous publications as an essayist and literary critic we find El arte narrativo de Francisco Ayala, 1964; Nicolas Guillen: poesia e ideologia; and several translations into English of a substantial part of the poetic work of Jose Maria Heredia and Jose Marti.

Among those attending the ceremony were Dale Robinson, ambassador of Jamaica to Cuba; and Roberto Fernandez Retamar, president of the Casa de Las Americas cultural institution, among other members of several of the country’s cultural centers.