An old man approached me on the Malecon seaside when I was taking pictures of the monument to the victims of the explosion of the battleship Maine, the American ship whose explosion in the Havana harbor was followed by a declaration of war of the United States to Spain in 1898.
“I was here the day the eagle that used to be up there was knocked down,” said the old man. “Did you know there had been an eagle on top of those columns before?”
I did. I had even seen the footage several times, but I knew that the man wanted to tell his story, so I gave him an excuse to do so.
“I had heard about it,” I told him, “but I had never met someone who was witness to it.”
“I worked at a café on 23rd Street when it happened. Those were intense times; I thought they would bomb us at any time. Everybody was nervous. One day, on my way out of work, I saw that they were bringing the eagle down. It shattered on the floor. The area was surrounded by militia troops, so I wasn’t able to get close to the pieces and see them with my own eyes.”
“Do you think it was the right thing to do? To take it down?”
“It had to be done, kid. Americans were doing us a lot of harm, and that eagle was a symbol of the Americans.”
“It still is, actually.”
“Yes. Now we’re becoming friends with the Americans again. Maybe they’ll be given permission to put the eagle back up there.”
“I doubt it.”
“Wait and see. I don’t really care; I think these columns look better this way. A famous artist, I think it was Picasso, said he was going to sculpt a dove to replace the eagle.”
“Doves are the symbol of peace.”
The old man started laughing. “I don’t know who thought doves could symbolize peace. Those animals are nothing but troublemakers. Anyway, a dove might have looked better.”
“In the end, they didn’t install neither of the two.”
“I would have put an angel there, like the ones at the cemetery.”
“That would have been nice.”
“But I tell you, they are going to put the eagle back. You’ll see. Didn’t they put back the statue of that president…? The one on G Street…
“It’s not exactly the same.”
“Yes, it is. Think about it and you’ll see. Monuments are there to remind us of history.”
“But isn’t the destruction of the eagle a part of history?”
“And our reconciliation with the Americans, isn’t that a part of history as well?”
I smiled and nodded in agreement.
“Anyway, that’s not for you or me to decide,” he said. “That’s handled by the higher-ups.”
The man said good bye and went away, limping.
