“San Juan is a pissant hill.”
-- Tom Miller, “Trading With the Enemy.”
Disgorged once more from the bus into Parque Céspedes, in front of the Ayuntamiento, we gathered at the entrance to the Cathedral of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. Waiting there was our local guide, representing the city historian, very professional and knowledgeable. She stuck with us until early afternoon.
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| The historic center. Parque Céspedes left center, Bacardí rum factory upper left. |
Diego Velazquez de Cuellar (no relation to the better-known Diego Velazquez, painter of “Las Meninas”) founded the village of Santiago in 1514. He arrived in the Caribbean with Christopher Columbus on Voyage 2, then stayed behind on Hispaniola when CC sailed back to Spain. Moving on to Cuba, he intended to get rich, and he succeeded.
Shortly, the town relocated. On the new site in 1515 the settlers raised a church. Velazquez built his house close by, about 100 meters away. He was the first Spanish governor of Cuba. This was the era of slave labor and Spanish acquisitiveness, and with only rare exceptions like Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Spaniards generally viewed the indigenes as less than human and suitable only for labor and service, and only so long as physically able. By most accounts, Velazquez himself was a brutal ruler.
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| Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, looming over Parque Céspedes. |
Inside a year, the original wooden church burned (NB: narrative aside here: the combination of church candles and earthquakes is a disaster in waiting - see Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755!). It was rebuilt promptly. Over five centuries, sequential catastrophes have befallen Nuestra Señora. After each, the faithful have soon rebuilt. Fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, sacking by pirates and privateers, physical deterioration and neglect, incompetent architects. The skeptical say that God must oppose a church at this location; the devout say that the Church has met each test of the faith asked by God. We report, you decide.
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The cathedral is above the first floor, which is gift shops and offices. The two statues below the towers are of Christopher Columbus and Fray Bartlomé de las Casas. The all-seeing figure on the roof is the Archangel Michael.
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| The interior of the cathedral was completely refurbished in advance of the Papal visit by Francis in 2015. It is very beautiful, very Spanish, and......... |
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| ........completely faux. All the sculpted decoration in the ornate ceilings is molded papier-mâché. Santiago is prone to earthquakes. Should one occur now (or, more importantly, had one struck when Francis was inside), falling debris will be lightweight and pose slight danger to those below. Genius, we say. But inauthentic. |
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| Anyone spending time in Santa Fe, especially, anywhere in the hispanic Southwest, or Mexico will know this individual immediately. The Catholic Kokopeli, visage for churches, t-shirts, and tattoos. |
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The crypt of the first archbishop of Cuba, re-interred under the floor.
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The Ayuntamiento, the balcony where new leader Fidel Castro first addressed the nation in 1959, and our bus.
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| Parque Céspedes panorama from the cathedral. The white building at the right side is the Hotel Casa Granda. Tom Miller writes of staying there in 1990-91, when it was pretty sketchy. He renders its condition then much in terms that one might use to describe a washed-up courtesan. Graham Greene's 1959 novel, "Our Man in Havana," places its main character there in the company of CIA and Eastern bloc spies. |
Construction began on Diego Velazquez's house in 1515. Like many colonial buildings the entrance level was a business, or sometimes carriage house and corral, and the inhabitants lived above. For Velazquez, some records assert that his home was a gold foundry. There are residual structures in the house that are compatible with that assertion. Today the house is a museum, furnished like the aristocratic home/museum in Gibara (Day 2), with period pieces from different eras.
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Diego Velazquez House, believed the oldest house in Cuba. Parque Céspedes is directly across the street (photo credit cubahora.cu -- snagged, we admit, but way better than our photos. No cars, no loiterers, no other tourists.) By the way, the modern building on the corner is the Bank of Cuba, a very busy place on pension day. Kind of a visual eyesore on this historic plaza.
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| This corner exhibits the condition of the walls, contrasted with restoration. |
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The bed is as short as it looks, maybe 4 feet long at most. In colonial Cuba, the general belief was that sleeping in the fetal position was healthier.
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| As in the historic house/museum in Gibara, antiques were "collected" from aristocratic homes whose owners had left the country. No owner who stayed was evicted (executed perhaps, but not evicted?). |
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| Awesome ceiling woodwork. |
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Interior well and furnace, probably for the gold foundry.
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| The central courtyard was created when Velazquez's house was joined to an old house behind, juxtaposing non-contemporary styles. The shutters, better seen in the above photo of the house, were designed to allow airflow in the living spaces, while allowing sight lines to the outside and blocking any view of the inside - like a one-way mirror. |
It is long claimed, but not proven, that the
restos of Diego Velazquez lie somewhere beneath the floor, near to or under the main altar, of the Cathedral of Nuestra Señora. If he's not there, he's whereabouts unknown.
Our guide-historian led a walk downhill to a
taller (workshop) which also is a school. We had seen a similar
taller in Havana in 2013. Teachers train students to use historic construction techniques, matching the materials and methods of the structures they intend to repair. The graduated students go on to work on restoration projects. UNESCO helps finance some of these. The potential benefit to tourism is clear.
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| Our guía profesional. |
Next stop: from Parque Céspedes by bus to “Museo del Ron Santiago de Cuba.” The museum is in an industrial area just across from the Estación de Ferrocarril (railroad station) and only a few blocks from the harbor. The area is flat and humid. While we clustered waiting to cross the street and the tracks, an electric hand-car blew by, several guys crowded onto it, shouting and waving as they passed. They didn’t really look like railroad employees, but, on the other hand, what do railroad employees in Cuba look like? On this corner are the large manufacturing houses where the actual rum-making happens. Our tour of the small museum combined a narrative of the history of rum-making in Santiago, a display of the varieties of rum which are made here, a couple of cabinets containing some historical and exemplary bottles, and….sampling! Some things are the same world-over - tour groups exit through the gift shop. This one, though, sells Cuban rum. We secured two bottles of Ron Santiago de Cuba Añejo 12 Años to carry back home to the US. Prices at the gift shop reflect the prices charged everywhere - grocery store, liquor store, highway rest stop, hotel store - fixed by the government.
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The rum factory proper, those buildings across the tracks.
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When C. Columbus brought sugar cane roots from the Canary Islands, on his second voyage to the New World, the story of Cuban rum commenced.
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A trapiche is a system of roller-compressors to extract juice from the cane.
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| Past rum masters of Santiago. It's unavoidable that there are Bacardís. The Bacardí family, of course, left Cuba after 1959. |
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| Some of these bottles, and below, come from older "soleras." Others reflect the wide range of rum distilled and bottled here from various locales, with each getting its distinctive name and label. |
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The most expensive rum in the world, crafted from very old barrels for the quincentennial of Cuba. Where found, it's priced +/- USD 3,000.
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| He'd just delivered customers to the rum museum, and was hustling for more. |
Our more-or-less sated IFAM group re-boarded for a scenic excursion to the inlet of Bahía de Santiago, where the bay joins the ocean, guarded by Fuerte El Morro.
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El Morro at the mouth of the harbor is where we're headed. For reference, focus on the upper right of the map. The pink vertical line at the head of the harbor is the rum factory that we just left. The purple line is the Hotel Melía, where we're staying. The red line is San Juan Hill (see below).
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| A pleasant neighborhood at the park entrance, a typical house. |
Lunch at El Morro was the typical Cuban fare, but the shaded outdoor setting, the ocean air, and the hulking presence of the fort make for a great venue. A group of Asians, about our number, sat at the long tables next to us, eyeing us querulously. Our first Chinese tourists in Cuba! These folks, though, were from Taiwan, not the mainland. They were very congenial. A few of them spoke some English. One elderly man said to us, “What are you doing here? You are the enemy!” but with a smile. We heard that, or something similar, more than once on this trip.
Castillo de San Pedro de la Roca (El Morro fortress) has the usual layout seen in Spanish forts from the imperial/colonial period. It stands high above the constricted pass into Santiago Bay. From atop the promontory, the fort commands a view of any approach or exit by water. Work on it started in 1638, and continued over a 60-year span. As the photos show, it is built as ascending terraces, with the citadel at the peak. In 1662 the notorious English privateer Christopher Mings attacked. The equally notorious Henry Morgan (Captain Morgan, anyone?) led one of the boats in the armada. The English partly destroyed the fort, and laid considerable waste to the town itself. After Mings and men sailed away, booty and artillery in hand, the fort was soon rebuilt and extra manpower added. It was never overrun again. During following centuries it was a prison, off and on, like its counterpart Fuerte San Cristóbal on Havana harbor. We entered the citadel by walking up a ramp which connects to a footbridge which spans the semicircular moat. There were two men,
basso profundo voices, passing us the other way. One said something like “
Dovaritsch, prezhnesiya!” Were they here on vacation, or is there something more sinister going on? (Cue "X-Files" theme here.)
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El Morro restaurant sidewalk to the left.
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This is a cannon of French manufacture from the 18th century. Like so many things French, it is over-ornately decorated.
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| This photo, and the next three in sequence, show the harrowing route an invading ship or flotilla would have had to take, passing directly under the fort, to enter the bay. |
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The pinnacle.
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An ethereal, wondrous thing happened on our way out of the fort. Suddenly the central spaces - between buildings, in the stairwells, within the stone corners - were filled with the singing of angels. Those of us not near the source could not tell whence it came. As it happened, a small group, 4 women (we suspect from Coro Orfeón) were in a small side-room enclosed by thick stone walls, singing out through the doorway. What a rich, reverberative sound with marvelous harmony! Who knew that forts have perfect acoustics? This short excerpt captures a little (thanks, Janis M.).
Tracking the Circunvalación (basically a loop road) from El Morro to our hotel, we skirted a wooded area to our left which looked like a municipal park. A low rise is visible behind, slopes populated by houses and apartment complexes. Viviana said, "That is San Juan Hill." And indeed it was. THAT San Juan Hill, the one Teddy Roosevelt, waving a sword and bellowing “Don’t fire ’til you see the whites of their eyes,” charged uphill with his Merry Band of Rough Riders, routing the Spanish, and thus saved an independent Cuba (minus Guantánamo) for the future interests of America, the United Fruit Company, General Motors, Meyer Lansky, the Giancanas and Traficantes, and Frank Sinatra. That’s sort of, with slight liberties taken, the story which was taught at East Elementary School, Brownwood, Texas, USA in 1957. We now know more about that battle of July 1898. We know of TR’s fear that he and his men were on the cusp of being slaughtered. And that the Spanish defense was spread over several ridges and entrenched on adjacent hills, and was formidable. And that there were lots of casualties. And that there were valiant Cubans, fighting alongside US soldiers and eager to gain independence from Spain. Still, the battle was the pivot point, and brought fighting to a close in what Cubans still call the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1898.
The first two photos are contemporary shots from the time of the battle. The next two show San Juan Hill now (because we did not go to SJH, photos plucked from the internet. Note to the Deep State, the US Copyright Office, and the Arizona Bar Association - none of these are being monetized in any way).
Back in the city, we disembarked in an older, mixed residential and commercial neighborhood. Along dim but not completely dark streets, there were many homes with windows open, families eating supper, watching TV. At times, the well-kept and well-appointed, calm domestic scenes indoors belied the dilapidated exteriors of the buildings. Almost every home has TV, but channel selection is limited, which we could see looking in - people watching the same program. As we trooped past, folks sitting on stoops or standing in their doorways and windows greeted us, or answered back when we greeted them. Muy amable.
Our destination was the old home that is the performance space for the group La Tumba Francesa La Caridad de Oriente. Tumba arrived in eastern Cuba in the eighteenth century, with the influx of plantation owners from Haiti and their slaves, escaping the slave rebellion there (1791).
UNESCO recognizes and supports the Tumba Francesa societies. UNESCO'S description here; it is perfect:
Tumba Francesa
Santiago de Cuba, Holguín, and Guantánamo, Cuba
Tumba Francesa is a type of society created by Haitian immigrants to Cuba and their descendants that has taken many forms in Cuba from 1790 to the present. In Tumba Francesa, performers employ musical instruments, vocal arrangements, dance movements, choreographic steps, and various cultural elements to develop programs for gatherings, festivities, and ceremonies.
In its earliest form, Tumba Francesa took place in coffee-drying houses, where a platform served as a kind of stage for "the king and the queen," an elect court for slaves to preside over the ceremony. Below, the caneman (bastonero), directed the order of the dances, and next to him stood diverse men and women identified with "hierarchical titles," while in the rest of the space were other enslaved people. Drummers placed on one side played their tumbas (an instrument similar to the Bantu ma-tumba drum found in northern Congo)—long, tubular, cylindrical drums with an open wooden box and a membrane pressed by a hoop and tightened with zig-zag rope.
Today, Tumba Francesa societies are located in three places in the western region of Cuba: Santiago de Cuba (La Caridad de Oriente), Guantánamo (Santa Catalina de Risis and La Pompadour)—both urban spaces—and rural Holguín, where a Tumba Francesa exists in the area of Bejuco, Sagua de Tánamo. In all three instances, the societies are legacies of the presence of French coffee plantations in the region, from the second half of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Tumba Francesa is part of the Slave Route Project, Cuba, network organized by the National Council of Cultural Patrimony in Havana, Cuba.
It is inspiring to realize that this society was formed in 1862, in this place. The photos and movies below show Tumba Francesa La Caridad de Oriente as we saw them. At the end, of course, the audience must get up and dance (NOT shown).
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Each dance opens with preliminary chant and drums.
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Entrance
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| The leader has a whistle around his neck. There are no vocal orders. Whistling signals changes in steps, forms, directions. |
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| The audience is rapt, for sure. Locals drawn from the neighborhood also check things out. |
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| The pole was completely wrapped, then unwrapped, without losing the steps or the cross-over-under. |
These three videos represent. The third one, in the last three minutes, showcases a superstar drummer, who is 15 years old.
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| The neighbors who came to watch the free show. Guapas y guapos, handsome, friendly folks. |
A great dinner in the neighborhood at family-owned El Salon Tropical, served upstairs on an outdoor terrace. The family offered good food, an elevated spot with a nice gentle breeze, and a first for everyone - Mojito Pie. We laughed a bit when dessert was announced, but jeez, it was really good.
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