I had written a chronicle for my blog, nice and repetitive chronic, like the thousands that have been published on the Stone Zoo (they say it is unique in the world and unparalleled in Cuba) and it was stored on my flash to post it someday, a day in which I had no desire or themes to create something new.
And then today, amid the stillness of Sundays in Facebook, when almost none of my fellow journalists are connected, the news appeared: Angel Iñigo Blanco Anaya died.
In Guantánamo, where in its mountains he sculpted on limestone about 330 animals, the causes of his death are unknown yet. I suspect that he died “of old age,” as the peasants say- they say that he was born on December 25, 1935 and he was 78 years old , which is not much , yet it is, especially when you have lived a lifetime in the field . Weird stuff biology and life have.
‘Primitive’, just like that, was how critics described him in his early peasant artist days and he, as usual, has said in interviews to journalists everywhere he did not care about that and just tells his story. He tells how his father taught him to model in clay and wood, in a very rustic way, and the first thing he did was’ figurines of the heroes of the country. “
But later when he changed mud and wood for the cold hardness of the rock he created the gigantic work of art that has made him famous in Cuba and beyond: the stone zoo that rises to 750 meters above sea level, a zoo that is a mountain, and a natural park.
“Before I was afraid of the big stones, but now I seek them and accept them as a challenge.”
Other times, for domestic and foreign media outlets he said: “I did not do it for money. I did it for spiritual satisfaction, because I was happy, “or explained how he made them” from pictures’ or watching in television those animals that he had never seen face to face: “My problem was with the proportions-he confessed-when I knew roughly the original size, I grabbed the tools and I started to chisel them. “
The zoo was started on December 21, 1977 in the San Lorenzo farm, before the municipality of Yateras and Niceto Perez today. It extends for 27 hectare and is on a rough terrain. Just ten employees are responsible for the care and conservation of heritage that is there, where you have to climb 324 steps to reach the highest point.
In this way, between coffee plants and many trees, one could encounter any kind of animal by Iñigo or his son, who has already about 90 sculptures in place-made with ax, machete, crowbar, shovel, chisel and a hammer trying to give life to a piece of rock or looking if the lion is OK.
The lion was the first animal the zoo had. He finished it in 1977. Now, almost 40 years later, there are roosters and chickens, lizards, rabbits, bison, a dog, a cat, a ferret, a duck, frogs, one buffalo and its calf, a giant snake fighting a bull, an ape of enormous proportions in front of his cave and some tiny animals with which, if you’re not careful, you can stumble upon.
Angel Iñigo died, but many great Cubans died between 2013 and 2014 that one, as a consolation, can only watch and breathe because his work is there, safe from those things that biology and life have… that are heartbreaking.
