IMMIGRATION TO CUBA. The White Print

Yury Ermolenko, "IMMIGRATION TO CUBA. The White", (From the "IMMIGRATION TO CUBA" project, 2012, acrylic on cotton fabric, 4 meta-paintings: "The White", "The Red", "The Green", "The Blue", 145x1600 cm. long each) On Jan. 21, 1998, Pope John Paul II became the first Catholic pontiff to visit Cuba, and more than 20 AP writers, editors, photographers and TV staffers arrived to cover the historic visit. En route to Havana, on his most politically charged trip since Poland in 1979, the pope told reporters aboard the papal plane he wants to hear from Castro "the full truth of his country, about relations between church and state." When the pope stepped off his plane just after 4 p.m., to kiss a tray of Cuban earth held up by four children, the airport crowd launched into a bouncy chant, "Juan Pablo Segundo! Te quiere todo el mundo!" — "John Paul the Second! Everybody loves you!" The gray-bearded, 71-year-old Cuban leader aided the bent and ailing pontiff as he took positions for the speechmaking and reception line. Cuba's President Fidel Castro, and Pope John Paul II check the time during a welcoming ceremony in Havana. The pope told the crowd at Havana's airport he was praying that Cuba would become a land of "freedom, mutual trust, social justice and lasting peace." Havana workers were given the afternoon off, on a sunny 80-degree day. Tens of thousands of Cubans, organized by neighborhood and workplace, lined the 12-mile route from the airport. Some sang hymns and waved tiny yellow and white Vatican flags and the red, white and blue Cuban banner. The Cuban president himself, a diehard Marxist-Leninist, urged people to turn out for the island's first papal visit ever. Just minutes after landing on what he called a "happy and long-awaited day," the pontiff spoke out on the U.S.-Cuban standoff that has isolated this Caribbean nation. "May Cuba, with all its magnificent potential, open itself up to the world, and may the world open itself up to Cuba," he declared in an arrival statement. And he firmly endorsed what he called the "legitimate desires" of the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba — its quest for more privileges under Castro's communist government. For his part, Castro denounced the U.S. embargo as "genocide," and sought to identify his revolution's ideals with the church's. "Another country will not be found better disposed to understand your felicitous idea ... that the equitable distribution of wealth and solidarity among men and peoples should be globalized," Castro, one of the world's last communist leaders, said in his welcoming address. The pontiff's visit, long delayed, much anticipated, may help set a new course for the Cuban church, if not for Cuba itself. At the least, John Paul wants the church to be strong enough to play a role in any transition after Castro, while the Cuban president welcomes the pope's recognition and any help he may give to persuade Washington to loosen the embargo. Communist party workers joined church volunteers in tacking the pope's portrait to palm trees, telephone poles and even the backs of bicycle cabs across town. One was even spotted on the national Capitol, where Castro's revolutionaries once declared Cuba an atheist nation. In an instant, Havana had become a city of startling contrasts — starkest of all the scene at the hallowed Plaza of the Revolution, where the papal procession route passed towering rival images of Christ and of revolutionary hero Che Guevara. "Jesus Christ, in you I trust," declares the one, "Until victory, forever!" the other. The climax is a Mass on Sunday in the Plaza of the Revolution, an event that may draw a half-million or more Cubans, grand finale to a week that many here hope will change their country forever. Castro made clear he saw no reason to change the course of Cuba's revolution, telling John Paul that "we choose a thousand deaths rather than abdicate our convictions." Colon Cemetery (El Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón) was founded in 1876 in the Vedado neighbourhood of Havana, Cuba to replace the previous Espada Cemetery. Named for Christopher Columbus, the cemetery is noted for its many elaborately sculpted memorials. It is estimated the cemetery has more than 500 major mausoleums. Before the Espada Cemetery and Colon Cemetery were built, interments took place in crypts at the various churches throughout Havana, for example, at the Iglesia del Espíritu Santo in Havana Vieja. Colon Cemetery is one of the most important cemeteries in the world and is generally held to be the most important in Latin America in historical and architectural terms, second only to La Recoleta in Buenos Aires. Prior to the opening of the Colon Cemetery, Havana's dead were laid to rest in the crypts of local churches and then, beginning in 1806, at Havana's newly opened Espada Cemetery located in the Barrio of San Lazaro and near the cove of Juan Guillen close to the San Lázaro Leper Hospital and the Casa de Beneficencia. When locals realized there would be a need for a larger space for their community’s deceased (due to an 1868 cholera outbreak), planning began for the Colon Cemetery. Colon is a Catholic cemetery and has elaborate monuments, tombs and statues by 19th and 20th century artists. Plots were assigned according to social class, and soon became a means for patrician families to display their wealth and power with ever more elaborate tombs and mausoleums. The north main entrance is marked by a gateway decorated with biblical reliefs and topped by a marble sculpture by José Vilalta de Saavedra: Faith, Hope and Charity. Some of the most important and elaborate tombs lie between the main gate and the Capilla Central. The Monumento a los Bomberos (Firemen’s Monument) built by Spanish sculptor Agustín Querol and architect Julio M Zapata, commemorates the twenty eight firemen who died when a hardware shop in La Habana Vieja caught fire in 1890 In front of the main entrance, at the axes of the principal avenues Avenida Cristobal Colón, Obispo Espada and Obispo Fray Jacinto, stands the Central Chapel modelled on Il Duomo in Florence is the octagonal Capilla Central (central chapel), the Capilla del Amor (Chapel of Love), built by Juan Pedro Baró for his wife Catalina Laza. On every side rectangular streets lead geometrically to the cemetery’s 50,000 hectares. The area of the cemetery is defined by rank and social status of the dead with distinct areas: priests, soldiers, brotherhoods, the wealthy, the poor, infants, victims of epidemics, pagans and the condemned. The best preserved and grandest tombs stand on or near the central avenues and their axes. María Argelia Vizcaino writes: "The first stone was placed on October 30, 1871 and before its extension completed in 1934, it had a capacity of 504,458.22 square meters. Rectangular in shape as a Roman-Byzantine-style Roman camp, with sidewalks, streets and listed roads, facilitating access to the visitor, (which in republican times was provided with a free map). The square located on the central street between the chapel and the huge doorway was called Christopher Columbus, because it was planned to erect a monument to the Discoverer next to the remains, which ironically never happened of the Cathedral of Havana, being the first bust erected throughout the continent (1828) and the only one that exists in the whole world with a beard. So the cemetery dedicated to the great Admiral, full of famous sculptures lacks one by which he was given his name." The Cementerio Colón measures 620 by 800 meters (122.5 acres). Designed by the Galician architect Calixto Arellano de Loira y Cardoso, a graduate of Madrid’s Royal Academy of Arts of San Fernando, became Colón’s first resident when he died and before his work was completed. It was built between 1871 and 1886, on former farm land. Laid out in a grid similar to El Vedado by numbered and lettered streets it becomes an urban microcosm of the city. The cemetery is laid out parallel to the last stretch of the Almendares river and against the grid of El Vedado. It is on the north axis, thus its main streets are on the four cardinal points of the compass. Symbolized by a Greek cross, it represents the four directions of the earth and the spread of the gospel to all directions as well as the four platonic elements. We find Greek crosses against a yellow background along the perimeter fence enclosing the cemetery, as well as part of the design diagram of the cemetery, which employs several Greek crosses at different scales thus forming an architectural tapestry. The main avenues, Avenida Cristobal Colón, Obispo Espada and Obispo Fray Jacinto, at six hundred by eight hundred meters, forms the first cross at the scale of the city. Notable interments: Beatriz Allende (1943–1977), Chilean socialist politician, revolutionary and surgeon Santiago Álvarez (1919–1998), filmmaker Manuel Arteaga y Betancourt (1879–1963), Roman Catholic Cardinal Alberto Azoy (?–1952), baseball manager Beatriz Azurduy Palacios (1952–2003), filmmaker Hubert de Blanck (1856–1932), composer William Lee Brent (1931–2006), Black Panther Party member José Raúl Capablanca (1888–1942), world chess champion Federico Capdevila (1845–1898), officer of the Spanish army who in 1871 defended Cuban students of medicine in court Alejo Carpentier (1904–1980), writer and musicologist Julián Castillo (1880–1948), baseball player Juan Chabás (1910–1954), author Eduardo Chibás (1907–1951), politician Ibrahim Ferrer (1927–2005), singer Candelaria Figueredo (1852–1914), patriot in the Cuban struggle for independence from Spain Carlos Finlay (1833–1915), physician and researcher José Miguel Gómez (1858–1921), president of Cuba Máximo Gómez (1836–1905), Dominican military hero Rubén González (1919–2003), pianist Nicolás Guillén (1902–1989), poet Nicolás Guillén Landrián (1938–2003), filmmaker and painter Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (1928–1996), filmmaker Harrison E. Havens (1837–1916), United States Congressman Alberto Korda (1928–2001), photographer Pío Leyva (1917–2006), singer José Lezama Lima (1910–1976), Cuban writer and poet Dulce María Loynaz (1902–1997), poet, novelist Dolf Luque (1890–1957), Major League Baseball starting pitcher Armando Marsans (1887–1960), Major League Baseball outfielder Rubén Martínez Villena (1899–1934), Cuban writer and revolutionary leader Mary McCarthy Gomez Cueto (1900–2009), Havana socialite and musician Angel D'Meza (1877-1954), Cuban League Baseball Player William Alexander Morgan (1928–1961), American adventurer, Grave Memorial 6392190 elayo Cuervo Pelayo Cuervo Navarro Presidential Palace Attack, Havana Fernando Ortiz (1881–1969), ethnomusicologist German Pinelli (1907–1996), journalist, actor Chano Pozo (1915–1948), musician, pioneer of Afro-Cuban jazz Juan Ríus Rivera (1848–1924), Puerto Rican military hero Guillermo Rubalcaba (1927–2015), pianist and bandleader Lola Rodríguez de Tió (1848–1924), Puerto Rican poet Dr. Francisco Taquechel (1869–1955), notable doctor, founder (1898) and director of the Farmacia Taquechel, Old Havana

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:12 W x 8 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:17.25 W x 13.25 H x 1.2 D in

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