Scenes from a Cuban Cemetery

This is the famous Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus) Cemetery in Havana, built in 1869 by a Galician architect, Calixto Arellano de Loira y Cardoso (I love Spanish names!), who unfortunately also became its first occupant.


Having to endure the ordeals of the organised trip, we had little more than a quick glance from the bus, as we listened to the guide’s explanations, and a very short walk afterwards. Even like this, the impression of walking in an overgrown garden of stone was overwhelming. There is marble everywhere and a lot of Carrara marble. Yet I felt a serenity stronger than the sorrow in the frozen beauty of the stone angels…




By tradition, there are no flowers in the cemetery, except for one tomb alone, that of Amelia Goyri, who died in 1901 at the age of 23, giving birth to a child who also died three days later. A very sad story already… The legend says that the child had been buried at his mother’s feet. A year later, when they exhumed the body – I couldn’t tell you why except that they do that by tradition there – they found the child in his mother’s arms. Amelia is also known as La Milagrosa, The Miraculous One, and people from everywhere come to her tomb asking for her help, especially those who are trying desperately to have a child. It is said that Amelia helps them…