CAMAGÜEY. - The batey (small town) Jaronú gained the National Award of Restoration 2018, result that kept Camagüey anxious, because after the scourge of the hurricane Irma, in September of last year, the most probable thing was the loss of its condition of National Monument.

Nevertheless, for the lights and the hands of the Office of the Historian of the City of Camagüey (OHCC), and the help of several institutions, organisms and construction firms, the architectural splendor returned and Brazil gained an integral project of services for the current Popular Advice, of the municipality of Esmeralda.

In addition, it deserved the laurel ICOMOS of the International Council of Monuments and Places, as well as the collateral ones granted by AZCUBA and the Chair Gonzalo de Cárdenas of Vernacular Architecture.

There, the work was devoted to the preservation of the urban and architectural typology of the batey, the recovery and recycling of the materials to support the originality of the roofs, the improvement of the rooming fund, the elimination of tenements and the construction of new houses.

Among the implied persons there were specialists of the directions of Main Plan and Management, Projects, Administrative Unit and of Services, Patrimony; in addition to the Provincial Company of Restoration and Conservation and students of the School of Offices “Francisco Sánchez Betancourt“, belonging to the OHCC.

The Jaronú project allowed to save the patrimony of the area declared national monument, propitiated the civil participation in the processes of local development and increased the quality of life of the inhabitants on having rescued not only the architectural patrimony but the culture and identity of Jaronú, affirmed Lourdes Mazorra López, journalist of the OHCC.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez