• Submitted by: manso
• Society
• 12 / 18 / 2010

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2010.12.17 - 14:19:02 / [email protected]. Young Cuban student Lisandra Cutiño HAVANA, CUBA.- Young Cuban student Lisandra Cutiño won on Thursday the 11th Hispanic-American Spelling Contest held in Montevideo, Uruguay with the participation of representatives from 11 countries.

In the first round of the contest,Cutiño and Spanish Blanca Perez ended in a tie. The round consisted on a dictation of 20 phrases by Latin American writers and 80 words. After the tiebreaker, Cutiño walked off with the victory, reported Prensa Latina.

Blanca Perez came second and Nicole Farias, from Chile, won the third place of the contest, which is for students on the senior year of secondary education and included participants from Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Dominican Republic and the host country.

Cutiño, 17, dedicated her victory to Cuba and the Revolution and noted that the contest was hard but she was very well prepared for it. She told PL that she loves to read and that whenever she sees or hears a new word, she looks it up immediately in the dictionary. However, Cutiño is not planning to take a major on arts but on biochemistry.

The girl lives in a small town of the eastern province of Las Tunas and attends the Luis Urquiza Vocational Institute in the province.  

Colombian Rafael Orozco, President of the Hispanic American Bien Escrita Foundation, said Cutiño sets a good example of the Cuban educational system not only because of the knowledge, but also because of her good manners, behavior and comradeship.

According to Orozco, the main purpose of the contest is to promote the good use of the Spanish language and reading habits.

Present in the closing of the event were Luis Garibaldi, Uruguay’s national director of Education, and ambassadors from participating nations.

Source: ACN