August 7, 2018

Cementerio de Cristóbal Colón, Habana, Cuba. February, 2012


There are lots of monuments in Havana’s main cemetery. Lots of stories, too. Tombs that remain empty until the owners who fled the revolution are allowed to return to Cuba. Beautifully designed mausoleums to local heroes. The stone domino erected by the guilt-ridden children whose mother got so excited during one of their games that she had a stroke and died. The tomb of La Milagrosa, a woman who died in childbirth buried with her dead son at her feet; when the tomb was opened years later, the baby was reportedly in his mother’s arms. In addition to plaques and memorials decorated with flowers, birds, weapons and other symbols carved into marble with a Latin sensibility that reminds us that nothing succeeds like excess. So it was with a certain relief and, frankly, shock to come across this monument in the graveyard’s center to students killed in the 1957 attack on Batista’s presidential palace. Look how the Cuban flag’s five stripes and single star are indicated through positive and negative space. How the lack of color adds to the stark impression. 

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