Between the months of April and May of 2006, the Statue of Liberty from Puerto Padre, first of its kind in the province of Oriente, by the Cuban sculptor José Vilalta Saavedra, received the most important restoration from its location in 1904.The artistic work despite its high aesthetic values and early location, at the very dawn of the twentieth century, passes without much prominence before the public, as one more element of the Independence Park; although it is located on the base of the old roundabout, its presence is hidden among the trees of the park, and the position on a pedestal of more than two meters in height, away from the line of sight of the passer-by, who has to lean to contemplate it.
The creator and art critic, Ángel Alberto Álvarez Carralero, offers other reasons that limit his popular appreciation.
According to Angel ALberto Alvarez one, similar to this, was emplaced eleven years later in the park of Gibara, but not from the same creator. Its difference is that the stylized woman of the Villa Blanca, inspired by Aurora Pérez Desdín, holds aloft a torch in her right arm and in the left, fallen, a parchment in which she reads: July 25, 1898, the date when the mambi troops commanded by Colonel Cornelio Rojas entered that town.In the base is inscribed the text: "Gibara has a Statue of Liberty because it deserves it", a phrase that raised controversy in the local press to the point that they covered it with another card that read: "Gibara, the liberators Of the homeland".
The connection to the site, in the Villa Azul de los Molinos, is that Mercedes Sirvén and Pérez Puelles, the only female commander of the Liberation Army, was the sister of Dr. Faustino Sirvén, second mayor of Puerto Padre and who suggested the creation of the statue gibareña.
The historian of the city of Puerto Padre, assures that on May 24, 1902, the Mayor President, Enrique Rosende Parodi, the Secretary of the City Council Fernando García Grave de Peralta and a group of local residents met in Puerto Padre to deliberate and agree on the erection of a monument that would remember the advent of the newly proclaimed Republic. The documentary sources need ...
"... the idea of the erection of this monument started from a group of friends composed by Mr. Miguel Barceló, Rafael Navarrete, Benito Barceló, Mr. Rosende, Carlos Vázquez and him (Grave de Peralta), having already held a meeting of masons in which it was determined that the work would be done by personal contribution ... "
The House of Representatives issued a Bill on October 7, 1904, by which a statue created in Italy was declared exempt from Customs rights, to be located in the Public Square of Puerto Padre and that was in the customs of the Port of Havana.
On July 4, 1907, the Mayor, President Enrique Rosende Parodi, and the Secretary of the City Council, Fernando García Grave de Peralta, wrote a Certificate stating:
"... that by agreement of this corporation and having confidence in the artistic talent and high gifts of Mr. José Vilalta de Saavedra, resident in Italy, he was entrusted with the execution of a statue in white marble, without being provided with a sketch or idea, that Mr. Vilalta executed the statue, making the sketch, and sent it to this city within the agreed period. With the artist, having arrived in perfect condition, and finally that the work was to the liking of the public having been executed in Rome, the statue that the present attestation refers to, represents the freedom of the Cuban people, and is an allegorical representation of true merit and originality, due to the talent of the celebrated author of the monument of medical students and the statue of José Martí ... ".
A chronicle published in the newspaper La Discusión on October 18, 1904, specifies its location:
"Yesterday at 5:30 PM the statue of liberty was placed in the beautiful Parque de la Independencia, the first stone of the pedestal was placed on May 20, 1902 ..."
On its singularity it aims:
"It is the first statue that rises in this Eastern province since Columbus discovered the Island, historical fact that adds this town to those that it already shows, of being one of the first points discovered by the famous navigator and also first in that it hoisted the banner of Cuba libre "
The document states that it is the first Statue of Liberty in the East and seduces curiosity if in the West other earlier ones were emplaced. It is a fact that, currently there are only three similar and two are subsequent to the Villa Azul, one in Remedios, located in 1906 and another later in Gibara, in 1915.
The journalist, Carlos Alejandro Rodríguez, of the portal Verbiclara, who investigated the three statues of liberty in Cuba, reports that there were similar and previous ones, or at least, there were attempts to erect them. It is known that two neighbors of Isabela de Sagua raised in 1902, in greeting to the recently inaugurated Republic, a replica of the New York effigy, with more than 50 feet in height, from the base to the top. Other sources state that before being located the José Martí, of the Central Park of Havana, also created by Vilalta, there existed in its place another replica of the Liberty that was destroyed on October 10 of the following year, due to a cyclone.
It is remarkable that the three effigies are made of Carrara marble. The one of Remedios and Puerto Padre raise the left arm, the existing one in Gibara, like that of Remedios, holds the torch, but in the right arm. The one of Puerto Padre had in its original conception and until the fifties an olive branch. All three have similar stature and high pedestals, although in their drooping arms they hold different elements: an oval shield, that of Puerto Padre; a sword, that of Remedios and a parchment, that of the White Villa.
Initially, the Statue of Liberty, in Puerto Padre, was placed at the center stage of the current amphitheater. In 1956, when the acoustic shell was built, it was necessary to transfer the monument and it was decided to take advantage of the base of the old demolished roundabout, by that date, due to the precarious conditions that augured its collapse.
In 2006, this work was subjected to a profound conservation process by the specialist of the Municipal Museum "Fernando Garcia Grave de Peralta", Yunior Rafael García Ramírez, who became his thesis degree to opt for the title of Plastic Arts Degree in the specialty of Conservation and Restoration of the Superior Institute of Art, ISA. The specialist, assessed the accumulated deterioration in its 102 years of weathering, which had caused erosion in almost the entire surface by the deposited dust and with a growth of lichen, in the piece, between fifteen and twenty percent.
Despite the shootings that took place in that central area and the scourge of three intense force cyclones such as the Flora, the Ike and the Irma, without offering any protection, the Statue of Liberty keeps intact its values and its pure marble workmanship. Carrarra, in a place full of palms and trees that were knocked down at different times. Only the olive branch forged in bronze, of which a fragment remains, is missing in its structure.
It is necessary to emphasize a little bit more, the values of this early work that constitutes a jewel of those located in Puerto Padre. Not everyone stops before this marvel and pride of Puerto Padre citizens that summarizes, according to the critic Ángel Alberto Álvarez Carralero, the desire for the establishment of the Republic as Martí dreamed and that connects the concerns of a people with the universal codes, seal of the sculptor Puertopadrense of the twentieth century.
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