CAMAGÜEY.- The exhibition program combines traditional showcases with state-of-the-art equipment for visitor interaction. Another element to highlight in the interior design is the stained glass window located on the wall opposite the main entrance, which gives elegance to the space and complements the associations to the funeral architecture. Images: OHCC Projects Department
CAMAGÜEY.- The day after making its services public, the General Cemetery of Camagüey received the late Sebastián de la Cruz. The burial of the body of that free brunette, on May 4, 1814, represents the beginning of a cultural change driven by health management. If we visit the catacombs that the church of La Merced has preserved, we can imagine the fears associated with the burials until then practiced in the temples.
Already in our time, the data of more than 10 thousand funeral constructions and their deterioration activated the alarms of citizens concerned about a place of spirituality, which tells the story of Camagüey through its losses. In the profuse investigation of the architect Adela García Yero ─The General Cemetery of Camagüey: the other city (Ediciones El Lugareño, 2018) ─ are the arguments used for the strategy of conservation of a cultural heritage, according to her: “as alive as the own city ”.
Precisely, two years ago the process of restoring the necropolis has been underway. The Office of the Historian of the City of Camagüey (OHCC) coordinates the management of the intervention and leads the projects of two new works: an interpretation center and a pantheon to the martyrs of 1851. In both cases, the designer is the architect Henry Mazorra Acosta, and the civil engineer Ernesto Reyes Fernández is in charge of the structural design.
INTERPRETATION CENTER
Calle de los Ángeles has closed its exit on May 20. From there, placed in direct perspective, the gaze bottoms out with a place of neoclassical codes. Located in the third section, it functioned as a necrocompany for about a hundred years. According to the plans, one room served as a waiting room and morgue, and the other for autopsies.
Inside the building, a Carrara marble slab ─material also used on the floors and exterior sidewalks─ survived as proof of gratitude to Monserrate Canalejo and Hidalgo Gato, widow of Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, and promoter of that work founded on October 20, 1887.
The architect Henry Mazorra Acosta starts from the criterion of recovering and restoring the lost decorative and symbolic attributes, but verifiable in the documentary sources. With his design of the interior spaces he aspires to favor intimacy and solemnity, concepts reinforced by the montage and the interpretive script that will have contemporary techniques and equipment.
"The treatment of lighting plays a decisive role in the atmosphere that I wanted to recreate and also has the objective of emphasizing the contents on display", explains Henry Mazorra.
In the opinion of the engineer Ernesto Reyes Fernández, neither this center nor the pantheon requires structural complexities, “but I had to prepare well because the designer always has the freedom to dream, and it is up to me to put it into practice. It is good to intervene the space. People will be able to interact more and learn more about the history of the cemetery ”.
In the set there will be a response from Joaquín de Agüero to Spanish government authorities when questioning him for having granted freedom to his slaves: "Fulfilling a duty of humanity and conscience."
In the set there will be a response from Joaquín de Agüero to Spanish government authorities when questioning him for having granted freedom to his slaves: "Fulfilling a duty of humanity and conscience."
In the set there will be a response from Joaquín de Agüero to Spanish government authorities when questioning him for having granted freedom to his slaves: "Fulfilling a duty of humanity and conscience."
PANTHEON OF THE MARTYRS
One of the routes that the Interpretation Center will promote focuses on the independentists of the 19th century. Indeed, one of the best known epitaphs highlights the first to free the slaves from him and the leader of the first uprising against the Spanish metropolis:
Unfortunate victim of a sincere love,
Felt by man and by glory
The leader Joaquín de Agüero lies here.
His life keeps Cuban history,
His death cries the entire Camagüey.
The vindication of his figure and of his companions ─funished on August 12, 1851 in the savannah of Beatriz Méndez─ was a battle fought by the researcher Elda Cento Gómez, although it has not been recognized in the right measure in the legitimizing circle of the current Cuban historiography. However, for Camagüey they are precursors of the mambí's deeds with their declaration of independence, drawn up and approved in San Francisco de Jucaral. In memory of him a funerary monument will be erected in the oldest area of the cementery, whose design is determined by the demands of a context with high heritage values.
The remains of Joaquín de Agüero, Fernando de Zayas, Tomás Betancourt and Miguel Benavides will rest in the new pantheon. As those of the other compatriots do not exist, their names will appear in bronze letters. The work includes the face of the leader cast in bronze, contrasting with pure volumes plated in marble.
The sculptor Gregorio Pérez, professor at the Francisco Sánchez Betancourt School of Trades, collaborates with this work: “The architect is almost a sculptor. He breaks with what has been done in this context and represents the modern man that was Joaquín de Agüero ”.
The artist who some time ago surprised with a sample of caricatures carved in Carrara marble, preferred that material for high relief, but that is not available: “Cuban marble has a lot of contamination. You cannot work in a large format because its shell is open, so it does not admit details. When acid rains affect it, it cracks and splits ”.
LANDSCAPE OF AFFINITIES
The projects for the Interpretation Center and the Pantheon "are underway for this year," José Rodríguez Barreras, director of the OHCC, told Adelante. Of the second, he added that a team of investigators and a forensic doctor are working on the identification of the remains of the patriots.
According to the engineer, "for both projects the situation of the pandemic has made the availability of materials difficult." Having everything, the designer calculates three months of execution for each one, they can be carried out at the same time.
For now, he encourages the approach to the cemetery. Still unaware, as happened to the inhabitants of 207 years ago, the people of Camagüey experience a cultural change associated with the ritual of death: the body does not get to dust by a slow natural process, but provoked in a few hours in the crematorium.
The aspiration of a declaration of National Monument adds up wills for the conservation of this peculiar site, recognized as the oldest in operation of the patrimonial cemeteries of Cuba. That other city still inhabits a landscape of affinities that speak to us of the unknown with the language of stone.
- Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez