CAMAGÜEY - Leonardo Pareta Cruz has the magic of being well preserved in memory. In an afternoon of this June, in the center of the living room of his house in San Fernando Street, he soon raised the endearing museum of memories where he polished the profession of his life, at times so disparate thanks to the troubles that he himself sought for that obsession of his towards the preservation of the patrimony. Museologist, museographer and curator of the natural history collection of the Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz Provincial Museum, this Camagüey native reveals unheard secrets.

"I entered the world of museums through natural history with taxidermy, the technique of dissecting animals. I always loved Natural Sciences, a germ instilled by my father Leonardo Pareta León, a pharmacist. I was also encouraged by the veterinarian Juan Gómez Zaldívar, who became my friend when I was ten or twelve years old. He gave me a book on taxidermy, the guide for my first little jobs at home. When my working life began, I was able to talk with Mario Aquiles Betancourt, founding director of the museum, who found a position for me as a taxidermy assistant.

I started there at the end of 1965. Then I became a taxidermist A in a course at the Academy of Sciences, where I took another course in ornithology. I graduated as a museologist later, although I had been doing museography work before that because I had the opportunity to participate with the national team when they were doing the restoration and new assembly of our museum here".

To show current generations the value of history, the Sala Independencia, Mario Aquiles Betancourt, located at the Museo Provincial Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz.

As if all at once, Leonardo wants to tell his great story quickly, without sweeteners, but with the pride of having participated in the first updated assemblies, which, although elementary were the pioneers, such as the natural history room of the then Pre-Vocational Institute of Exact Sciences Máximo Gómez Báez, the Mausoleum of Pino III and the Museum of the Yaya, to name a few examples.

"When I started, there was only the Ignacio Agramonte Provincial Museum. After Law 23 was established for the creation of municipal museums, we grew together in a very nice time with constant training. It was a rare month when there wasn't a meeting in Havana with the eminences of this country. There are several municipalities with purely Camagüey assemblies made during that stage because we gained the confidence of the nation. We had the green light".

The thematic dedicated to Aboriginal Archeology and Port-au-Prince, is appreciable since 2013.

-In Camagüey, there were some novel assemblies, what brought about that freedom?

-A series of factors came together. First of all, our dedication to the work. I was lucky to be accompanied by colleagues who liked this as much as I did. In addition, that team had outstanding manual skills. It was made up of Manuel Fernández Parrado, currently the museum's curator; Omar Rodríguez, a plastic artist who did his social service there; Bertica, also a curator; Félix Guerra, a magnificent sign maker; and Yamil, a restorer. Together we set up the natural history room. Manuel and I were in charge of the municipal museums at the beginning.

Officially inaugurated on December 23rd, 1955, the Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz Provincial Museum treasures close to 100,000 dissimilar pieces, and expert museologists have considered it to contain three museums in one, due to its collections of Plastic Arts, Natural History and History, unique in the national patrimony.

Specialists and technicians must be general. Life forced me to be integral because at the beginning we were four cats.

Pareta pauses and continues his passionate story:"The museographic script is the way you show your collection.

The novelty of our collection is its setting. Not the way we wanted, but it is still the only one set in Cuba. We did it with still life, we could have done it with live nature, but we lacked the resources.

In spite of that we received many congratulations from personalities. Rosa Elena Simeon, the late Minister of Science, Technology and Environment, congratulated us personally. We were also visited by some North Americans from the biotechnology area. When asked what they considered to be the best natural science museum in the Caribbean, they said ours.

The museography follows many trends, but the natural history room must be very didactic. In many parts of the world they have the animal on a base and you have to imagine the world where it lived; to imagine whether it lived in a forest, a savannah, a desert or a coast. In our case I chose each ecological niche and Lorenzo Linares, a great naturalist painter, represented them".

The Carolina tree is one of the oldest in the museum's courtyard. Several people have tied ribbons to the branches as a symbolic way of entrusting their wishes to this close relative of the ceiba.

Those museologist skills taught Leonardo that his trade is all about knowledge, creativity and commitment. For many reasons he prefers the natural history room.

"I was born here on Pobres Street, but four or five days after I was born my parents moved to La Vallita, in Florida. There they had a small medicine cabinet that my father managed. I lived in a rural house where - instilled by the old man - I had hens, mockingbirds, poultry in general. When I was seven years old, we returned to Camagüey".

The turns in his life were more than geographical: “When I met Gómez Zaldívar I began to dissect animals in the most vulgar way, injecting them with formaldehyde and logically they would spoil. That was not taxidermy. Thanks to the book he gave me, I prepared the animals better. Until not long ago, the first crocodile I designed in my maternal grandparents' house, the only one left in the family, was preserved.I prepared some jicoteas, tortoiseshells, birds, many animals I hunted myself. In the museum we prepared many crocodiles to send to the former Soviet Union and others for ourselves.When I started working I also collected pieces for the Museum".

Flag flown at the '68 gesture, in the 19th century.

-Many of these animals that we have all seen in the Natural Hall of the Museum are something like “children” of yours?

-I am not so bold because in the sixties Education donated the pieces from the private schools of the city, especially from the Pious Schools and the Institute of Secondary Education.Of course I increased the collections, I made a pretty good one of nests of eggs, but there was already an embryo of that collection.While I was there I tried to enrich it. We had relations with the Customs and through that same channel the museum acquired a pangolin -in Cuba, if there are three, that's a lot- and we got some monitor lizards.I worked a lot with CITMA, CIMAC, the protected area of Limones Tuabaquey, in Sierra de Cubitas; with Flora and Fauna, the park rangers. My link was always with Nature.

Weapons have attracted the attention of the visitors.

Leonardo has taken the floor, but I want to provoke him. When we talk about museum objects, we think, for example, of furniture. Isn't this heritage a bit strange?

"Everything is part of the heritage. Cuban endemic species are part of Nature's heritage.They were born and raised on this island.We were brought or have Spanish, American Indian, African, Chinese or any other blood, but our fauna is endemic. It has as much patrimonial value as a piece of furniture or a historical object.

Unfortunately we do not have any known local endemic until now, we only treasure nationals, we did everything in our power to protect and conserve those species, but there is still a lot to do because it is very difficult to change the mentality and practices of people with the tradition of two and three generations thinking they are doing the right thing".

La Libertad printing press published several Mambí's newspapers.

-Although our fauna is benevolent, in those adventures of exploration you ran your risks. Did you have any mishaps?

-Fortunately, our fauna is very benevolent.Here the most risky thing is a scorpion or wasp sting, and the most dangerous thing is on the coasts, with crocodiles.We have had serious encounters with them. Modestly, I have not yet met an animal of our fauna that scares me, I have handled many without problems.

I like a job in which I am presented with something new every day. Look, I immediately went to museology and museography; of course, I always took care of the natural history collection.

A sample of the beauty and usefulness achieved in the manigua.

Now, with his words, Pareta leads me through his beloved space in the Museum: “Our collection is magnificent, one of the best in the country.Havana is ahead of us because it has extinct specimens of the world's fauna, but we have a very large and cosmopolitan collection. In the 1980s we made a transitory exhibition that goes through the entire world of the Arctic and Antarctica through its fauna.

The work of museography requires a lot of manual skill, apart from tastes, interest, knowledge, desires and self-demanding. Manolo and I have earned the epithets of being precious, detailed, curious... Our work has those requirements because what you offer enters through the eye".

As the institution is still closed for repairs, he tries to maintain the link with the public. Among the ways to achieve this is the monthly action “Hidden Collections”. In this way, the Conservation Department's project links the history of museum objects with experiences, uses and new experiences.

The day, alive and whole, did not fit entirely in the Museum. When we began to talk, the sun was still strong, but we didn't even notice the tremendous downpour, like the ones we had been missing in Camagüey for a long time.Even so, the pigeons that also sniffed outside through the indiscretion of a window never stopped spying on us. Outside the showcases, without chemicals or fillers, Pareta makes his own portrait.

"I'm like a freak to the vast majority of people. I've had several problems as a nationalist because I do think of mine first. Some people can handle any object with nonchalance.Whoever works in the museum has to have a huge dose of vocation.Museum work is beautiful, quite clean, but it demands sacrifice, dedication, real love, not a cliché. That's not easy to achieve.

Nor, it seems, is it easy to sustain it.Pareta has concerns about the future of his specialty:"Many years ago, at an assembly, I said I was worried about my replacement.Unfortunately, the natural history collection has no one to take care of it; and I did so many things... I even hid pieces so they wouldn't take the works of German painter Otto Siepermann out of Camagüey, because someone wanted to donate them to the National Aquarium.That collection was going to Havana and I, being bold and daring, took it and hid it.When that happened, I took them out and mounted them, a marvel of scientific art.On the other hand, we lost the last signature of Camilo Cienfuegos because a director thought it should be donated to the Museum of the Revolution. Why, if Camilo disappeared after leaving Camagüey and here he gave his last signature? This is part of Camagüey's history".

One of Leonardo Pareta's colleagues is the museologist Manuel Fernández Parrado, who has been working uninterruptedly for 45 years.He recently received a Special Recognition on the occasion of International Museum Day.

-With such passion and boldness, it is not difficult to find the space that the provincial museum occupies in his life.

-I have dedicated my life to the museum. I started before I was nineteen and retired when I was sixty-two.The museum gave me everything. I have to thank it for all the cultural background because it forced me to improve myself in a general way.Before, the concept of a multipurpose museum was used.We spent our lives conserving all the collections.The taxidermist and I worked directly with the pieces; we worked with a historical specimen as well as with a natural one.Look, in a museum, conservation is hardly practiced in the natural history room because it is more economical to take a new specimen and prepare it than to fix an old one; this goes against the principles of conservationism.In the case of an ordinary animal you could do it, but not if it is an endangered or extinct species.

Faced with this dilemma, we have preserved and made incredible works in which artificiality is not noticeable.

- How much can the pieces suffer over time?

-If they are properly handled and conserved, they are eternal.

In the zoology collection I had specimens that were more than eighty years old. Conservation is the crux, if you don't conserve, you don't keep and it is cultural memory that is lost. There are difficulties with the materials to achieve it, but the provincial museum should pay much more attention because it treasures wonderful collections.

We have the second largest collection of plastic arts in the country, one of the best collections of history in the nation, a fantastic historical archive, a huge natural history collection within which there are its collections, among them a fabulous malacology collection, another one of numismatics.Besides, I tell you, where are you going to know the flag of the invasion or see the letters of Ignacio to Amalia? You have to go to the Provincial Museum to hold history in your hands.

- What is the sensation of having contact with an original object of that magnitude?

-Many things. Not everyone can say that they had in their hands the revolver and the shirt of El Mayor. Undoubtedly, you feel the pride and responsibility of handling a piece of that magnitude, which is fragile due to its age.There are many little things that come together.

The formation of my parents and my character contributed to this. Parents mold us a little bit but your character comes in you. I am very meticulous. For everything to be halfway acceptable you need to work with a method and a methodology.

Very few people work with me because I am a very bad pedagogue, I teach things once, I can remember them, but I don't have to be on top of you. Now they talk about the new museography, but in the end it's the same thing they taught me.

-Do we look at Camagüey as a great museum, do we take proper care of what we should preserve?

-More could be done, but going back inside the museum I give you an example, it has collections that Camagüey's citizens have never seen and apparently will never be able to see, collections that are sleeping the eternal sleep in storage because the museum has nowhere to grow.However, it is located in the old cavalry barracks that occupies the whole block, but a part of it was lent to Education, where now the Academia de las Artes Vicentina de la Torre is located. We are still waiting for another one in exchange for that location.

- What are those collections that have never been seen?

-There is a huge fossil collection, a marvelous mineralogy collection, a fabulous pharmacy collection, a costume collection, a hat collection, an archeology collection, and so on.There are warehouses crammed with pieces without proper maintenance because there are no chemicals and no space to put the pieces.

-Avoiding false modesty, how many “weirdos” like you would be needed?

-There are people who can make that judgment with more weight than I can. As far as I'm concerned, there's no one left in the collection.

The natural history collection that I suffered, that I managed, in whose defense I got into trouble with the museum's management, is now forsaken. To make an exhibition, Manolo and I even took a ladder, tools and went house to house trying to protect keyholes, facade numbers, door knockers... We started the collection of colonial architecture.

- And you never felt like taking a piece for yourself?

-It never occurred to me, nor did it cross my mind, I tell you in all honesty. I had multiple opportunities to do it because here on this little island more people know me than I know myself.I have always worked in public places where people have had to come in one way or another to see me. With that level of relationships I have been given great things, valuable pieces that are still in the museum.We always had the vision and idealism of making the Ignacio Agramonte Museum the best institution in this province, the most respected.In the nineties we achieved it: it was an honor to hold an activity in our halls and exhibit there.

Our museum has international prestige because it is an emblem of this nation. When necessary, I was something like a foreign minister.

-I am struck by this kind of museum footprint that I find in your taste for collecting.

-There is always something you like the most and if you have the possibility to collect it, that's where collecting comes from. I have a cousin who collected pens. My daughter collected bottles, but we needed a mansion to put them in. I came to have about five hundred species of cactus.

I have a colony of catey, a Cuban endemic sitacid, in nineteen ninety-eight I took it to captivity and I was the first person to reproduce it in those conditions in Cuba. When you enter the world of natural sciences it is very difficult to get that “microbe” out of your veins. Many times I have tried to stay without any animals because it is still a struggle, and when I go to see...

 For Leonardo, animals and plants are his lifeblood.

Since his retirement in 2006, his profession has other nuances because he keeps alive pigeons, breed hens and dogs.He has received several trophies as a national judge of fancy pigeons and as a competitor, joys that dispel his nostalgia and a certain discouragement at the fate of the heritage he helped found in his own way.

I tell you the truth.I don't expect anything.I feel disappointed. Of course, I fulfilled my role, I did everything I could. One is always dissatisfied, but I got tired of banging my head against the wall."

Leonardo's voice gradually faded away, giving way to the cooing of his pigeons that know him very well. It has not stopped raining yet and the afternoon allows us to share a tasty coffee with cream. Earlier, I noticed a little mystical corner in the living room with about a hundred dusty books.

The small library is another of his prides. It took a lot of work, but it was put together entirely with donations from grateful visitors to whom he accepted just that, only books. Then he shows me A guide to the birds of the West Indies of nineteen ninety-eight, autographed by James Wiley, one of the authors, I leaf through the copy carefully while I insist with another question to this tall, encyclopedic man, extremely lazy to write, but someday he will write down the unique notes of his life heritage.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez