Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-CUBA: Salvaging a National Heritage Treasure

Dalia Acosta

HOLGUIN, Cuba, Nov 9 2004 (IPS) - The crumbling columns of the old Plaza de la Marqueta will once again become the heart of Holguín, a Cuban city that was founded in 1725 and is located more than 700 kilometres from the capital.

The project to salvage this part of the national heritage will use the foundations of what served as the market place until 1968 to build a concert hall that will hold an audience of more than 600, a recording studio, an archive and a cafeteria.

“There will also be a rehearsal studio for the provincial symphonic orchestra,” plastic artist Julio Méndez, who is in charge of the project that involves the entire square, told IPS.

Although the region around Holguín has suffered from a severe drought for more than a year, which means most governmental efforts and funds have focused on dealing with the crisis, Méndez is confident that the construction project will soon get underway.

The model of what is to become the concert hall, created by architect Felipe Rodríguez Colombié, can be seen in the provincial recording studio, together with the blueprints and other documents from the project.

This will be the most ambitious, and highest-cost, project since the restoration of the city square began four years ago.

A few metres away, people are crossing the old market place, using it as a shortcut, while others are hawking newspapers and sweets, queuing up at public phones, or simply escaping the sun in their doorways.

“There were shops and stalls selling meat, fruit, vegetables and cigars in this area. It came to be known as the ‘Plaza de la Marqueta’ because there used to be a candle factory, and ‘marqueta’ was the name for the moulds in which the wax was melted,” Méndez explained.

It was, according to the caption of an old engraving from 1848, the “divine square, the heart of the city, a space both secret and public, a place both for complicity and gatherings”, the only place that left “the heart silent after a new serenade”.

Built in 1829, the tree-enclosed square turned into a visiting place for local residents.

But with the closure of private businesses by the government of Fidel Castro after the January 1959 victory of the Cuban revolution, the small shops were converted into family homes and the charm of the square was lost.

The new residents of the old buildings knocked down walls, built others and made the alterations they deemed necessary, without respecting the old architectural styles that form part of the national heritage.

Now, the idea is to salvage the square, located just a few metres from the ancient Plaza de Armas, to turn it into a new cultural, historical and commercial centre in Holguín, known as the “city of parks”, which has a population of about 300,000.

The project will add another attraction to the province of Holguín, one of the main tourism areas in Cuba, with its 41 beaches, several islets and large nature reserves.

The city is also one of this Caribbean island nation’s most important cultural centres, along with Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Camagüey, Matanzas and Santa Clara.

“Twenty-six cultural institutions are already working in the area around the Plaza de la Marqueta, and the project will bring that total to 46,” Méndez said.

Around the square, small shops have been restored, and sell cigars, records, books, and products from the Cuban Fund of Cultural Goods. There is also a recording studio and a printing press.

In the future, the offices of the regional newspaper ‘Ahora’, a radio station and various cultural institutions will operate there as well.

“Holguín is nowadays better known for the Loma de la Cruz than for the Plaza de la Marqueta,” lamented Arielis Díaz, a sociologist from Holguín who has been living in the Cuban capital for 12 years.

Among the city’s oldest cultural traditions are the “Romerías de Mayo”, popular festivals that date back to 1790, which include a mass pilgrimage to the Loma de la Cruz, a 275-metre-high hill.

Almost 300 steps separate the street from the place where 200 years ago the Franciscan Antonio de Alegrías erected a wooden cross in memory of the day when Saint Helen, the mother of emperor Constantine the Great, found the Calvary cross.

“There is no today without yesterday,” was the slogan of a group of artists from Holguín who, in the early 1990s, made an effort to revive the traditional “Romerías de Mayo”.

Along a network of perfectly laid out streets and a number of parks, the project extends from the historic centre of the city of Holguín to the very bottom of the stairs leading up to the Loma de la Cruz.

Experts from Holguín are also restoring the old city, “which will be exclusively used by pedestrian traffic, from the Loma de la Cruz to the railway”, said Méndez.