[NYTr] The Maine: The Most Debated Monument in Cuba
 
Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2007 22:53:30 -0500 (CDT)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
CubaNow - Sep 17, 2007
http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=5&item=3341&c=2

The Maine: The Most Debated Monument in Cuba

By Luis Sexto

Cubanow.- The most debated monument of its time and of the coming
decades is the one dedicated to the victimes of the Maine. For Cubans,
the explosion of the American Navy battleship at the port of Havana on
February 15, 1898, was the beginning of an evident American
intervention in the war the Cubans were fighting against Spain in order
to be independent. But, contrary to their public goals, it only served
to frustrate the independence aspirations of the Cuban independence
fighters.

To understand it, itbs necessary to recall that once the intervention
was over, the Cuban Constitution was legally limited due to the so
called Platt Amendment. It allowed the United States to say the final
word with regard to the national economy and politics. Itbs
understandable that most or, at least, a considerable part of the Cuban
population have kept their patriotic sensibility hurt since 1902. For
many years, some believed that the Maine had been the outcome of a
diplomatic intrigue that included a self-coup.

In 1998, Cuban publishing house Editora PolC-tica published a book
written by historian Gustavo Placer Cervera in which the author updated
the tragic episode and presented the outcome of the latest researches
carried out by American experts and historians on the cause of the
explosion. Experts admit it might have occured inside the battleship as
a result, perhaps, of an accidental fire or a spontaneous coal spark;
or maybe due to a mine used to sabotage by the Spanish fundamentalism,
a hypothesis the expansitonist and militarist circles accepted since
the first moment as the only feasible one bkeep in mind that McKinley
had proposed Madrid the purchase of Cuba.

Perhaps, the real cause will never be known and the event become an
enigma of the American history. But one conclusion is certain: the
blowing-up of the Maine was used as a pretext by the White House to
declare a war the most bellicose groups and Hearstbs and Pulitzerbs
newspapers had been preparing. The monument, approved by a presidential
decree in 1913 and erected in 1925, still exists, standing on its
platform, across the sea and near the Hotel Nacional, showing cannons
and shipsb chains where a bronze plaque has the names of the 288
victims.

The Revolution bwhich reconquered the stolen sovereignty and national
wealth- did not demolish the monument. It has respected the memory of
the dead sailors. But, in 1960, it pulled down the eagle which in an
aggressive position topped the monument. Pablo Picasso, acoording to
what was published by the press then, promised to sculpt a dove of
peace to replace the big predatory bird. But he either forgot it or had
no time.

A dove is what the monument to the victimes of the Maine lacks for
nobody misses the eagle. However, the existence of busts, monuments and
buldings to pay tribute to the American citizens whose actions
contributed to the relations of friendship and cooperation between the
two peoples in a proces of mutual cultural influence is a common thing
in Havana and other Cuban cities.

The passer-by that goes for a walk in the park dedicated to the most
prolific and famous Cuban educator, JosC) de la Luz y Caballero, accross
the entrance channel of the bay of Havana, recognizes the busts of
American educators Mattew Hanna and Alexis E. Frye. They balong with
Cubans Esteban Borrero EchevarrC-a and Eduardo Yero BuduC)n- designed the
educational system in Cuba once Spain took home the remains of the
colonial regimen and left its sequel of backwardness and disorder.

Towards the center of the old city, in the Parque de la Fraternidad
Americana, a bust of Abraham Lincoln is among those dedicated to the
Spanish American heroes and other famous personalities of the
political, literary and scientific worlds such as VC-ctor Hugo and Luis
Pasteur. The name of Lincoln is also the name of a sugar mill in
Artemisa, a municipality of Havana province, and of several schools of
the national education system.

Another sugar mill, in Villa Clara province, is called George
Washington. Populous streets of the Cuban capital are also named after
the father of the American independence.

Six of the most important cities of the country buntil 1976 they were
the capitals of the six Cuban provinces that constituted the former
political and administrative regions- have kept the buildings of
secondary schools and provincial courts built in the first decades of
the XX century. They are characterized by the neoclassic style that
lends the solemnity and seriousness that distinguishes study and
justice. Their durability in the townscape is a tribute to mister
Newton who, during the second military intervention of the United
States in Cuba, between 1906 and 1909, run the department of civil
construction of the government. Newton reintroduced classicism in Cuba
and formed several disciples as experts of other academic styles with
which the Cuban architecture, with almost no experts until that moment,
put an end to certain poor models like Art Noveau which, based on what
historian Emilio Roig said, spread fantasies, exaggerations and
extravagances. Even when some of those buildings were built after his
stay in Cuba, his designers followed the ideas and proposals of the
creative American architect.

Some of these buildings, renovated today, such as high school No.1,
today called JosC) MartC-, in the capital, still show a fortunate period
of the national architecture. 

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