By: Santiago Romero, MSc.
Santiago de Cuba – Incredible, but true, the firmest ground in the eastern part of the national territory is where tremors happen very often: in Santiago de Cuba. A city that has become a natural amphitheater and is considered the second capital of the republic and among those with the highest population concentration with half a million inhabitants.
The so-called “strong point” of the city of Santiago de Cuba is 969 kilometers from the capital, in a hot environment with a high concentration of steel and nickel.
As another curiosity, it is the flattest and most regular point of the city, not only because of its nature, because in this environment thirty-three years ago, exactly on October 16, 1991, the people from Santiago concluded intense voluntary works for the transformation of what today is considered as the main entrance of the city.
I Will Go to Santiago
A recent climatological study left a controversy from the records of a so-called “strong point” with records in highly sweltering temperatures, especially in the beginning of May, during the end of June until the beginning of September, by the way, also powerful winds blow here in all directions.
It seems that the land widens.
The phenomenon of “elasticity” calls the attention of many seismologists, historians, tourists, sociologists, surveyors, artists, politicians and community managers, given the weight that can support the so-called “strong point”, once a scrubland where there was barely a trail run by the first hikers of the city and by the Irish journalist James J. O’Kelly, in the service of an American newspaper, in search of an interview with Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, the Father of the Homeland.
“Wow, how this point of the planet grows!”
So I’ve heard on more than five occasions on May Day 2024, in the heat of the preparations on the occasion of the five hundred and ninth anniversary of the founding of the once colonial village by Diego Velazquez, in the south of eastern Cuba.
What is happening here is incredible, first hundreds of thousands of people arrive on foot along the central highway, then trucks full of workers, students and peasants from El Caney, El Cristo, San Vicente, Ciudamar, Baconao, Siboney and El Cobre appear… “but, wait journalist, more are coming on bicycles, roller skates and several congas along Las Americas Avenue…!
Alberto Lescay and his Links to Santiago de Cuba
So says Alberto Lescay, a mulatto who seems to take refuge in a jungle of gray hair and braids that tie well each of the ideas that lead him to sculpt the face of the patriots of a city, Mother of Heroes and Martyrs as the Lieutenant General Antonio Maceo, the Bronze Titan, whose equestrian image he created, defended by twenty-three machetes to form a symbol for the pride of the inhabitants of Santiago de Cuba.
Of course, it was not easy this project that became the epicenter of the greatest constructive movement in Santiago de Cuba, when the 4th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba was being prepared. Imagine how difficult it was to hoist a structure of one hundred and twenty tons of steel on a pyramidal base, plus protocol halls, the eternal flame, and inside, a Maceo museum with holographic elements and all topped with green marbles that distinguish the highest point of the firmest ground of the city.
A new avenue links -directly- the Mausoleum where the mortal remains of National Hero Jose Marti rest in the Santa Ifigenia cemetery with the firmest ground: the Antonio Maceo Revolution Square, located in this eastern city, the same one that always called the attention of the National Hero when he called it “…the Indefatigable Santiago”.
