On a day like today, January 8, 1984 – exactly 40 years ago – the first monument erected to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in Latin America was inaugurated by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz and Army General Raúl Castro Ruz. The site chosen was the park that bears his glorious name in Havana. The monumental work, conceived by Celia Sánchez Manduley and materialized by the artist emeritus of the Soviet Union, Lev E. Kerbel, rests in a beautiful environment of Cuban nature designed by the architect Antonio Quintana. It is located on the highest hill of Lenin Park, sculpted on pearl grey marble, selected and brought from the Sierra de Las Casas quarry, on the Isle of Youth. On its lower right front, the effigy has carved the words of the historical leader of the Cuban Revolution: "Lenin was from the first moment not only a theoretician of politics, but a man of action, a man of constant and incessant revolutionary practice." The opening ceremony was attended by Cuban intellectual Armando Hart, at that time a member of the Political Bureau and Minister of Culture, and Pyotr Demichev, then an alternate member of the Political Bureau and Minister of Culture of the USSR.