Photo Essay: The Fortification of Havana

The thing that probably surprised me the most about Havana, Cuba was how fortified it is.



There was literally a wall that used to surround what's now considered "Old" Havana (or La Habana Vieja)—and although that wall now exists only in small pieces, the coastal part of Old Havana appears much as it did in its colonial era, when Spain had to protect it from capture and seizure.



I stumbled upon the Castillo de la Real Fuerza after wandering off from the Plaza de Armas—and I was shocked to find how undeniably medieval it looked.



Protected by a moat, this "Castle of the Royal Force" is considered to be the oldest fort in the Americas...



...completed in 1577, thanks mostly to the work of slaves and prisoners.



Spain still had control of Cuba back then—and it needed to protect its island from being further pillaged by French buccaneers. It ordered the construction of the fort but forced Mexico to actually pay for it.



Unfortunately, they built it just a little too small and a bit too far from the mouth of the harbor to protect much of anything.



From the upper story (which was originally used as barracks and storage of munitions), you can see
the Faro Castillo del Morro lighthouse, which is far closer to the seaside entrance to Havana's port, via the Canal de Entrada. (More on the Puerto de la Habana in a future post.)



In fact, the view is so good from up there that in 1634, Cuba's Governor Juan de Bitrián y Viamonte built a watchtower up there, topped by a bronze weathervane cast in the form a woman. He named it La Giraldilla, after a similar sculpture in his homeland of Seville, Spain. (The original is now protected in a museum, while a replica stands atop the watchtower today. You can also find her depicted on the labels of Havana Club rum.)



When the castle had proven its ineffectiveness as a military fortress once and for all, it was commandeered as a gubernatorial residence and then subsequently a national archive, a library, an art museum, a ceramics museum, and most recently a maritime museum.



As usual, I was more interested in the building itself than in its exhibitions and displays, so I climbed as high as I could go—delighted when the security guard allowed me into the watchtower.



"Just don't ring the bell," she said. I don't remember if it was in English or Spanish, but I knew immediately what she meant—probably because that's exactly what I would want to do, once I got up there.



From across the canal, you can also see the Castillo and Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, which is the largest Spanish colonial fortress in the Americas. You couldn't accuse this one of being too small for anything.



Spain ordered this one to be built after the British attacked and took over Havana (briefly) in 1762. The Spanish wanted to make this massive fort absolutely impenetrable, and it worked—although not exactly in the way you might think. In truth, it was so formidable that nobody's ever even tried to invade it since is completion in 1774. However, that doesn't mean it didn't see its share of violence and military action.



Batista (the dictator overthrown by Castro and his fellow rebels) ended up using it as a military prison. After the Revolution, Castro's "Executor-in-Chief" Che Guevara moved in, commanding the torture and firing squad killing of Batista's officers and anybody else deemed to be a traitor, dissenter, or any other sort of "class enemy."



Despite its grisly and bloodthirsty historical context, the fort is now a tourist attraction.



You can visit the original chapel, which was built out of rough stone and masonry with a Spanish baroque facade designed by Pedro de Medina of Cádiz and contains an 18th century baroque-style communion table, relocated here from the Iglesia y Convento de Santa Catalina de Siena.



La Cabaña also houses an armaments museum and a museum dedicated to Che, but most famously it hosts a colonial parade and ceremony called cañonazo (which literally means "cannon shot"), which draws hordes of people every night.



El Cañonazo de las 9, as it's called, concludes with a historical reenactment of the firing of a cannon over the Havana harbor, every night at 9 p.m.



It's a tradition that dates back to the 18th century, when the gates of the city walls would close every night at nine o'clock...



...and be signaled by the firing of a cannon over the bay.



During the ceremony, while everybody else lined up along parapets and on rooftops, I took the opportunity to explore what was inside the walls of this fort, along the avenues between its many buildings.



Che's old office was there somewhere, as were the vaults that once stored gunpowder.



By the 16th century, Havana had established itself as a large port city; and by the 18th century, it had "the most complete dockyard in the New World," according to UNESCO.  Between its shipbuilding industry and the fortunes earned as a requisite stop when sailing to the New World, Havana had a lot to protect from pirates and other colonial forces.

After the Revolution, despite having achieved independence, Cuba still had to strengthen its forces to fight against its worst enemy: itself.

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Photo Essay: To the Bell Tower

Photo Essay: To the Bell Tower

In Havana, there are five historic squares, each plaza devoted to its own cause: Old Town, the revolution, arms, St. Francis, and the cathedral.



The cathedral in question at Plaza de la Catedral is that of San Cristóbal—or Saint Christopher, supposedly named after Christopher Columbus, who was not, in fact, a saint.



While our guide tried to direct our attention around the 18th century plaza, a former swamp that once functioned as a navy yard...



...I couldn't take my eyes off of that great, baroque church...



...or its bell towers.



Made of locally-quarried limestone, its ornate exterior appears actually to be that of two different cathedrals...



...because its two towers were built during different time periods—and only one of them by the Jesuits before they were expelled from Cuba in 1767.



 The Franciscans finished the job over the course of the next decade.



It's unusual to see a monument in the baroque style to have such an asymmetrical facade...



...and even more unusual to be able to spot so many marine fossils in the surface of the stone.



The inside of the cathedral has been stripped down to a more neoclassical style, with colored light filtering through the stained glass and ornamenting the stone pillars and vaulted ceilings.



As I had been gazing up at its beauty, a man (who I presumed to be a local) asked me, "Do you like our cathedral?" And when I said yes, he told me, "You know, you can go up into the tower..." I told him I didn't think I had the time. After all, most of the stops on our tour of Havana were all too brief.



I was about to rejoin the group in the plaza when I caught wind of one of my fellow American tourists convincing the bell tower ticket guy to accept her U.S. dollar in place of a Cuban convertible peso. I actually didn't have any Cuban or U.S. currency on me (having brought Euros to skip the fees at the foreign currency exchange), so I scrambled to borrow a dollar from someone and ran back to plead with him on my own behalf, "Por favor..."



I knew that climbing that tower would make me late, but I didn't care.



After all, I could still see my group from up there.



I could call out to them if I wanted to.



But I was too busy gazing out at the other tower, the clock tower...



...and examining the bells in my tower as I climbed as high as I could get...



...until I reached the top.

Over the course of my life, I've spent too much time gazing up at towers rather than climbing up into them.

Yes, all that climbing does make me late sometimes. But if anybody's looking for me, you can just look up to the highest height, peel back the curtain, and step into the darkest corner—and there, I'll be.

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Photo Essay: The Cemetery Where Fidel Didn't Want To Be Buried

Our tour guides were taken aback a bit when we told them we wanted to visit a cemetery while we were in Havana.



But it turned out to be not such an unusual request. After all, ours wasn't the only tour bus parked at The Colón Cemetery in Vedado.



It's a stop of historic, cultural, and architectural significance, having been founded in 1876 (though the statues weren't placed atop the Main Gate until 1901).



This necropolis is named after Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón), whose arrival in 1492 marked the beginning of centuries of Spanish rule of the archipelago.



Here, the monuments, statuary, and headstones are elaborately carved...



...most of them whitewashed by the sun.



Some of the mausolea have seen better days, but—despite their dilapidation—they were surrounded by scaffolding during our visit, and they appeared to be active construction sites.



This is where the most prominent people of Cuba have been interred...



...from popular singers and musicians (like Rubén González and Ibrahim Ferrer of The Buena Vista Social Club)...



...to sugar magnates like Eutimio Falla Bonet, as well as military heroes, baseball stars, and politicians.



Former Cuban President José Miguel Gómez is buried here.



Former Cuban President Alfredo Zayas y Alfonso is surrounded by stained glass here.



So why wouldn't Fidel Castro have wanted to be interred alongside all of these prominent Cuban figures?



Did he not want to spend eternity with the historical statesmen of Cuba, like former President Carlos Manuel De Cespedes Y Quesada?



Did Fidel not appreciate Art Deco?



Did he not revere the firefighters who were betrayed and died in the Great Fire of 1890?



Was he afraid of bats?



Did he not want eternal tears to be shed for him, in the form of a teardrop-shaped chain?



Perhaps he was deterred by the idea of being forever surrounded by all those mass graves...



...or by the million people who've been buried here in total, not all of whom were quite so prominent, relegated to the perimeter of the 150-acre cemetery.



In fact, the cementerio is so crowded, and space is at such a premium, that many of the tombs are reused to bury multiple members of the same family over the years.



Bodies are not embalmed and are buried in, more or less, a pine box. By the time three years have passed, the flesh has rotted away, leaving behind a pile of bones that gets relocated to an ossuary.



They take up far less room than had the body been chemically preserved and stored in an airtight casket.



Some of the tombs have been abandoned, the families of those buried living in exile outside of Cuba.



Some families sell their tombs to other families for the money.



Some of those tombs that are in limbo, so to speak, have been vandalized—their windows broken, with no money to fix them and no current owner to take responsibility for them.



Maybe Fidel was afraid of his gravesite being vandalized.



Maybe he couldn't bear the thought of hearing that infernal knocking at La Milagrosa, the rat-a-tat-tat of thousands of visitors who perform a ritual in hopes of a miracle of fertility.

Fidel Castro died on November 25, 2016 and was almost immediately cremated. His ashes made a four-day, 540-mile procession across the island before being permanently interred at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery in Santiago de Cuba.

It's less than 60 miles from Fidel's birthplace in Birán, but it's considered "the birthplace of the Cuban revolution."

And so that's why Fidel didn't want to be buried with the other Cuban dignitaries, in a cemetery that's characterized by an establishment that he fought so hard against.

I'm guessing that cemetery tourism will become a lot more popular now in Cuba, now that people can find Fidel in one of them.

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