About an hour’s drive from Santiago, on a small mountaintop, is one of Cuba’s most important religious shrines, and one with an intriguing founding story,
We visited the El Cobre shrine, officially the Basílica Santuario Nacional de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre, as part of a shore excursion from a Viking Ocean cruise, but we were following in the footsteps of thousands of Cubans and visitors, including three Popes.
The story goes back 400 years, but the actual shrine is fairly new—it was built in 1926 on the site of a smaller church. Here’s the story, as told in Wikipedia—no way out of the whole thing:
Local legend recalls the Spanish captains who bring with them religious Marian images to guide and protect them from English pirates at sea. Two Native American or Indian brothers, Rodrigo and Juan de Hoyos, and an African slave child, Juan Moreno, set out to the Bay of Nipe for salt. They are traditionally given the moniker the “three Juans”. They needed the salt for the preservation of the meat at the Barajagua slaughter house, which supplied the workers and inhabitants of Santiago del Prado, now known as El Cobre.
While out in the bay, a storm arose, rocking their tiny boat violently with incoming waves. Juan, the child, was wearing a medal with the image of the Virgin Mary. The three men began to pray for her protection. Suddenly, the skies cleared, and the storm was gone. In the distance, they saw a strange object floating in the water.
They rowed towards it as the waves carried it to them. At first they mistook it for a bird, but quickly saw that it was what seemed to be a statue of a girl. At last they were able to determine that it was a statue of the Virgin Mary holding the child Jesus on her left arm and a gold cross in her right hand. The statue was fastened to a board with an inscription saying “Yo Soy la Virgen de la Caridad” or “I am the Virgin of Charity.” Much to their surprise, the statue remained completely dry while afloat in the water.
Overjoyed by what they had discovered, they hurried back to Barajagua. They showed the statue to a government official, Don Francisco Sánchez de Moya, who then ordered a small chapel to be built in her honor. One night, Rodrigo went to visit the statue, but discovered that the image was gone. He organized a search party, but had no success in finding Our Lady of Charity. Then, the next morning, she was back on the altar, as if nothing had happened. This was inconceivable as the chapel had been locked.
This event happened three times. The people of Barajagua came to the conclusion that she wanted to be in a different spot, so they took her to El Cobre. She was received with much joy in El Cobre, and the church there had its bells ring on her arrival. It was at this point that she became known as “Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre” or “Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre”. Much to the dismay of people in El Cobre, the disappearance of the statue continued to happen.
Before the famous image on 19 May 1801, a royal edict from king Charles IV of Spain decreed that Cuban slaves were to be freed from the El Cobre copper mines. The story circulated around the island quickly. Many felt that the Virgin purposely chose to have her sanctuary in El Cobre because it is located in Oriente Province. Later folk legends associated the taking of copper materials to their homes after having it blessed near the Virgin’s sanctified image as a form of souvenir and miraculous healing.
The statue which believers believe is the original, miraculously preserved after all these years, is about 16″ high. The head is baked clay coated with a fine powder and painted. The robes are occasionally renewed and replaced. Both the main figure and the smaller Jesus wear crowns; that honor was given in 1977 by Pope Pius XI in 1936.
On all three of Cuba’s Papal visits since the 1990s thaw between government and church the Cobre shrine has been on the list, along with the cathedrals of Havana and Santiago. John Paul II crowned her again in 1998, Benedict XVI awarded the shrine a golden rose in 2012, and the current Pope, Francis, visited in 2015.
The shrine has another unique distinction: in 1954, when Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature, he brought the medal to the shrine and dedicated it to the people of Cuba. It was stolen in 1986, but recovered days later. For years after, it was hidden from view.
And congratulations to George G and Michael Fong II, who recognized the site of our One-Clue Mystery this week!
