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Vaya con Dios, Queen of Salsa...AZUCAR!!!!

Thanks for the Ping, Luis

I am sorry to say I never heard of this lady, being as how I live in the very German Midwest. I will have to look up some of her music.

I am sorry all of you have lost a woman who seems to have embodied the national soul of a Free Cuba.

I pray for her family and those who loved her!

Great article, thanks Luis.

AZUCAR Y LIBERTAD!

Thanks for the article and the photos.

Bump!

Final farewell to Celia Cruz
23/07/2003 08:30 - (SOUTH AFRICA)

New York - New York bid an emotional goodbye to Cuban-born "Queen of Salsa" Celia Cruz on Tuesday, as her coffin was carried on a white carriage through the city's streets to a funeral service at St Patrick's cathedral.

The carriage, bedecked with white flowers and Cuban flags and pulled by two white horses, was followed by fifteen limousines carrying her husband, Pedro Knight, members of her family and close friends.

Cruz, dressed in white, was laid on the carriage in a gold-coloured coffin accompanied by a crystal urn.

The singer died at her New Jersey home at the age of 77 last Wednesday of a brain tumor.

A white car drove slowly in front of the carriage flying the Cuban flag and carrying an image of Cuba's patron, the virgin of Caridad del Cobre.

"She is just beautiful in her casket, just like a saint," the salsa singer La India said.

Despite six days of mourning, in Miami and New York, her adoring fans turned out in their thousands in New York once again on Tuesday crowding the city's Fifth Avenue in a bid to gain a glimpse of the singer's funeral courtege.

The route was lined with the flags of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru and other Latin American nations.

"It's beautiful, beautiful," exclaimed Mildred, from New Jersey, adding "she deserves this and much more. God put her on this planet so she could give music to the people and be a good person, and she achieved that."

Jeanette Suarez, of Westchester, New York State, described Cruz as a "marvelous person" who gave so much to so many.

The cortege headed to the cathedral from a nearby chapel where fans were able to pay their last respects prior to Tuesday's funeral service. Organisers said some 75 000 people had paid their respects to Cruz at the chapel.

Her death has sparked such an outpouring of grief, that New York governor, George Pataki, has declared July 23 "Celia Cruz Day."

The auxiliary bishop of New York, Josu Irionodo, led the funeral service in Spanish at the catholic St Patrick's cathedral here for 1 500 mourners inside the building while loudspeakers broadcast the ceremony to those outside.

"She was born to be free," the bishop said adding "Celia rose high, very high, but she never distanced herself from the people. She didn't need stairs, an elevator or directions to reach the heights she achieved."

Michael Bloomberg, the New York mayor, the actor Antonio Banderas, and musicians Johnny Pacheco, Ruben Blades, Gloria Estefan and Marc Anthony were just some of the well-known personalities to attend the ceremony.

American singer Patti LaBelle sang Ave Maria while the Puerto Rican singer Victor Manuelle gave a rendition of "Life is a carnival" as mourners left the cathedral.

Following the ceremony, Cruz's coffin was taken for burial to the Woodlawn cemetery - where Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday and Miles Davis are also buried - in the New York neighbourhood of the Bronx.

Her body will be laid a temporary mausoleum while a permanent one is finished for her over the next three months.

Cruz studied music in her hometown of Havana, where she was born October 21, 1925, sang on Cuban radio programs and, in 1950, became the lead singer of the legendary Cuban group Sonora Matancera. She wed the band's trumpeter Pedro Knight, by whom she is survived.

She and the band left Cuba in 1960 and eventually settled in the United States. Cruz was never allowed to return to her homeland.

Fidel "Castro never forgave me," she once said.

Tens of thousands of people paid an emotional tribute in heavily Cuban-American Miami Saturday to Cruz, who staunchly opposed communist Cuban President Fidel Castro.

Her endless string of hits helped bring Cuban music a wide international audience and ever-growing list of fans over a career that spanned six decades.

Oscar-winning US actress Whoopi Goldberg plans to play Cruz in a movie of her life story.