Cuban city rescues its heritage

Cienfuegos, Cuba, Jul 14 (Prensa Latina) A stylish sculpture by artist Rita Longa (1912-2000) and a heritage graveyard are being restored in this Cuban city, which will be the venue of the national ceremony to celebrate the 69th anniversary of the assault on the Moncada barracks.

Director of the Office of the Conservator of the City (OCCC), architect Iran Millan told Prensa Latina that they are restoring the sculpture that recreates the legend of the aboriginal woman Guanaroca, a piece set up by Longa in 1988 in a privileged place of this provincial capital.

Taking the 5.30-meter-high sculpture made with brass-bronze and bronze tubes is the mission of a group of artists and workers that wants to give that gift to the city to celebrate this historic event, the expert of heritage conservation said.

The piece was originally set up in the center of a 15-meter-diameter manmade pond by the sea from where the main street of the city, current 37th street, radiates,.

Millan also spoke about the restoration progress in the Reina graveyard, inaugurated in 1893 in the westernmost part of the city, the only one in Cuba with a burial system in vertical niches.

It has excellent crypts, mausoleums and sculptures made of Carrara marble, with many metal pieces and gravestones with reliefs that watch over the first families of Cienfuegos (founded in 1819), Millan described that National Monument.

He recalled that the former Espada graveyard, in Havana, had similar structural and ornamental characteristics.

On July 26, 1953, a group of young people led by Fidel Castro, which was later known as the Generation of the Centenary, stormed the Moncada (Santiago de Cuba) and Carlos Manuel de Cespedes (Bayamo) barracks, actions that marked the beginning of the revolutionary fight against the dictatoship of Fulgencio Batista (1952-1958).