Among the hills and the sea

Revolution means to have a sense of history; it is changing everything that must be changed...; it is achieving emancipation by ourselves and through our own efforts...; it is defending the values in which we believe at the cost of any sacrifice...

Fidel Castro Ruz

I was less than five years old when my mother made me accompany her every time she went out. Coming back from seeing one of her friends, we turned the corner where there was one José Martí’s bust. There were certainly more statues similar to this one in the city, but due to the things children like to do, I used to make my mother stop and wait in this particular bust while I recited in front of the martyr the following verses: «I cultivate a white rose/In July as in January/...». What were the motivations of that act that became a ritual? I guess it had to do with my attachment to the writer’s texts and my admiration for the work of this man.

For individuals, knowledge of the history of their land, as well as of the actions and ideas of the national heroes who preceded them, has an influence on the future identification with the values and traditions that define them as part of a culture, a region and a country. Preserving the cultural and historical heritage, an arduous task for poor nations, has been given a special attention in Cuba, devoting resources and efforts for this objective.

La Habana is a province with lots of places of patrimonial interest due to the existence of places and constructions like the remains of the Western trail, places that were stages of essential battles of the invasion like the sugar cane mill of Alejandría and the Angerona coffee plantation. However, some of these monuments are deteriorating with time. Although it was already given properly attention, the Mausoleum of the Martyrs, in Artemisa, was in a delicate situation because of lack of resources. In San Pedro, Bauta, where lie Antonio Maceo’s mortal remains, restoration tasks are being implemented to mitigate the damages caused by a cyclone. But there are other places of the province in too critical conditions. Santa Cruz del Norte must be given attention.

There, in accordance with Karel Tirado Matamoros, director of Museo Polivalente, the three fourth of the archaeologically important places of the province are located there, and there are places still underwater and a great part of the shipwreck of Spaniard and pirate ships yet to be found. The Diago family, one of the driving forces of the sugar industry progress in the West, lived in that area. In Canasí, the root of the Congo culture continues to be alive; Hershey is probably in the entire continent... Karel highlights the value of Boca de Jaruco, a town of fishermen and of Chipiona, a small peninsula.

A cavern system with more than five caves is located in Boca de Jaruco. The so called Caverna de las Cinco Cuevas (cavern of the five caves) was declared a Local Monument in the 80’s because of its indigenous pictographies, tool remains and places where people have been buried. One of the pictographies that called the attention of specialists is the drawing of a cross that dates from the pre-Columbian epoch. The remains of the wood stockpiling of Axaruco are in that exact place —like some grandstands both sides of the river— perhaps the first of its kind in America, from where most of the expeditions of conquest began. Hernán Cortés headed towards Mexican lands from there. In the right bank, one can see the remains of San Dionisio castle, later built by the Spaniards to assure the loading and unloading of goods, mainly sugar.

Chipiona takes its name from Mr. Diego Velásquez, who gave this name to the place where he built his summer residence, in memory of his hometown in Spain. This is why Chipiona is the cradle of current Santa Cruz, since the most direct ancestors of the current people from Santa Cruz settled there, two families from the Canary Islands that came in the XVII century. With the passing of the years, descendents crossed the river and settled there, which brought about the current city.

Moreover, Luis Enrique Ruiz, member of the speleology group that works in this area, states it is almost impossible entering the Caverna de las Cinco Cuevas (cavern of the five caves), because the access to the cavern was blocked by a «collapse provoked, mainly, by the oil prospecting in the area. It is unknown if the drawing of the cross got lost because it is not safe to enter the cavern up to that point.»

Chipiona case is even worst. «Despite it is an important archaeological area in Santa Cruz, few studies have been made», states Karel. «There are different reasons for this: a deficient organization of the people who should be in charge of the researches, the amount of weed that slows the job, and the building of different factories causing the consistent limitations for the speleological and archaeological work.»

Law No. 2 dated August of 1977 rules the care and protection of monuments and places in the country. It states that a monument is all urban and historical institution and all construction, place or object that, due to its exceptional character, deserves to be preserved because of its cultural, historical or social meaning for the country and be declared as such by the National Commission of Monuments. It is legislated that, if a place is protected for its cultural value, any thread should be notified to the relevant authorities. A Municipal Delegation for Monuments should exist in every place and be in charge of the care of these places. The cavern of Boca de Jaruco was legally protected and, although Chipiona had enough qualities to become a monument or, at least, to be declared a protected area, it did not succeed.

Amarilys Ribot, local historian, former member of the Provincial Commission for Monuments, says that the responsibility for that kind of situation is given by different reasons. Apart from the obvious difficulty caused by the lack of economic resources, one could say that, on one hand, «the municipal delegation was inactive for a great period of time; on the other hand, those who should be in charge of the field investigations, necessary to declare any place as a local monument or protected area, have not started to work yet. This is one of the reasons why Chipiona was not protected on time.» Regulations were not fulfilled either in the case of the Five Caves. Amarilys explains that «it is prescribed that all land intervention where a local monument is located, should be deal directly with the office for monuments and all bodies are supposed to know well the inventory of them. If the Center for Environmental Industry and Technology (CITMA) allowed the explosions is because this institution didn’t know about the existence of a local monument there.»

The same circumstances that caused the loss of Chipiona and the damage to the caves are the reasons why the remains of the wood stockpiling and numerous sugar cane mills located in the old region of Jaruco are not included in the list of monuments. The cemetery of San Matías is not included either. This cemetery was the only sign of that town that disappeared in the flames of the rebel incendiary torch during the invasion, condemned to be the center of the Spanish sugar storage.

Jorge Saínz, professor, researcher, cultural promoter, and María Inés Rodríguez, director of the Local Cultural Center, go into the causes in detail. Saínz underlines that, in the wake of the industrialization of the territory after it was declared a developing area in 1982, many people settled there. After all this, «neither the feeling of belonging nor the will for preserving are the same». María Inés states that Santa Cruz is considered a place just for passing through. She points out, among all, that there is a lack of sensitivity regarding the cultural problems on the part of governmental officials, who in most of the cases, are not from the territory and do not know its values. Laydi Domínguez, specialist in territorial organization in Physical Planning, affirms that Santa Cruz is the third more polluted municipality in the country.

There is no movies, theater or art gallery in Santa Cruz. The latter does not exist since its building was declared to be in risk of collapse. The movies is used for meetings since the film projector and the video got broken. The local Cultural Center collapsed since six years ago and since then, workers are waiting for its rebuilding or for the reassignment of another facility. Meanwhile, they do their job in an excessively reduced space of a narrow room.

Amarilys says that the poorer are the Cuban people the more they cling to their belongings. The inhabitants of the more remote places are the ones who have more feeling of belonging and possession about a monument, a legend, a battle of the past. For the nation that champions the strength of its identity and ideas, it is indispensable that the worry for its idiosyncratic values reaches even the fastest places.