Havana, the greatest
History is made by men and generations. That is why I would prefer for the 500th anniversary of Havana to be celebrated in the year 2019, so that the nation and the city have the chance to assume their responsibility towards a symbol as important, representative and famous as that of Havana facing the world.
The above was stated by Dr. Eusebio Leal Spengler on the eve of the 495th anniversary of the founding of Havana.
In the current year 2019, the once called Village of Saint Christopher of Havana, today capital of all Cubans, will turn 500. A few months before this celebration, to be held on 16 November, construction and remodeling work is still being done which will make it possible for our city to offer an embellished and renewed image to the world.
On that day, many Cubans will walk around the founding ceiba three times, and it is expected that many of the wishes made on the luxuriant tree will be aimed at Havana, since Cubans strive to build a better country, and so does the capital.
At the foot of a ceiba, the first mass was officiated and the first town council meeting was held in the village of Saint Christopher of Havana. A tour is highly recommended of the 1826 oil paintings «The First Mass» and «The First Town Hall Meeting» by Jean Baptiste Vermay (1786-1833), displayed at El Templete (The Small Temple), where the remains of Vermay and his wife Luoise are kept in a marble urn. Both paintings constitute the first interpretation of what historians consider to be the founding of Havana on 16 November 1519.
Like bees their hive, to the exact extent of their own wishes, human beings transform their memories and customs into palpable matter. In that respect, and given the complex process of cultural heritage production, I may affirm with profound conviction that the intangible is inseparable from the monumental and the real. […]
Erudite Alonso de Cáceres wrote his ordinances for the city in 1574. The transient village was left behind, and small fortresses started to grow amidst tiny vegetable gardens and tall fences. Streets were delineated and temples stood tall to serve as milestones, while white and yellow little houses emerged around them with their graceful roofs, as may be seen in the naive 1609 drawing found in the Archive of the Indies in Seville.
Next to the plan of our unmistakable first Renaissance fortress, our attention is powerfully attracted to the drawing of a solitary tree. In its shade was born the hamlet serving as matrix of the village and the future town. Our identity emerged under this mythical ceiba capable of resisting the fury of all hurricanes.
Havana is not Cuba, but it looks like it. In a quicksilver mirror, everybody dreamed about it ever since it became the axis of transatlantic trade. Havana was indigenous, Spanish, English for eleven months and American since 1898, when the Northern flag was hoisted on her lap. Until January 1959.
It is a mysterious city that refuses to disappear with a violet sunset and a scorching sun that strengthens it. Alejo Carpentier called it the city of columns. Columns protective from burning sunlight and torrential rain, similar to Galician columns from Santiago de Compostela, smaller and thicker, but also protective from drizzle and hailstorms, from which so many immigrants fled who would eventually sear in the heat of the tropic.
Columns behind which African Orishas blinked at promenaders. Doric, Ionic, Corinthian or simple plain eclectic columns, unique in the Caribbean. And they appear behind them inciting to impudence and lust. In Havana nothing is hidden, everything is exposed with ease and relaxation and remains on display as if in a beach resort or a butcher’s shop. Still, much lies under the ground and nobody or almost nobody can see it. Because Havana is deep and its streets sink into the ground. Havana is joyful, frivolous and dramatic, of passionate boleros and box rumbas.
Nowhere else however can cleaner air be breathed. What mystery of lightness is this! / With big rocks from the road / and my giant shoes / wishing the city without stopping out of tiredness. / Havana has areas that no one has ever seen.