{"id":235018,"date":"2021-02-22T09:19:30","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T14:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=235018"},"modified":"2021-02-22T10:03:03","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T15:03:03","slug":"faces-and-stories-of-the-parque-de-la-fraternidad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba\/faces-and-stories-of-the-parque-de-la-fraternidad\/","title":{"rendered":"Faces and stories of the Parque de la Fraternidad"},"content":{"rendered":"

The daily and cosmopolitan life of <\/span>Havana<\/span><\/a> has one of its most representative places in the Parque de la Fraternidad. This vast esplanade, with its trees, benches, and monuments, is one of the Cuban capital\u2019s points of greatest confluence, a place of passage and meeting, of rest and contemplation, and even of love dates and sexual skirmishes, although today the pandemic imposes an unusual landscape to its days and nights.<\/span><\/p>\n

Its real name, shortened by popular usage and rationality, is Parque de la Fraternidad Americana, and long before it is what it is today, the lands it currently occupies were mangroves and groves, in a colonial Havana that grew to encounter it. At the end of the 18th century, it would become a field for military exercises that would improve in its layout and infrastructure, and as such, with the name of Campo de Marte, it would reach the Republic. Then it would renew its image again and almost hosted a zoo, but the devastating cyclone of 1926 would destroy it and change its future.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Parque de la Fraternidad, in Havana. Photo: Otmaro Rodr\u00edguez.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a short time, it would recover from nature\u2019s fury to emerge as the Parque de la Fraternidad. Its metamorphosis was catalyzed by the intense constructive movement promoted in its beginnings by the government of Gerardo Machado\u2014the same one that would later try to perpetuate itself in power through blood and fire\u2014and by the city\u2019s celebration of the 6th Pan American Conference, which would serve as a reason for its new name and for the planting of the iconic ceiba tree that has crowned the place ever since.<\/span><\/p>\n

Famous French urban planner Jean Claude Nicolas Forestier would be in charge of the design of the park, made up of several plots of different dimensions that play with the layout of the surrounding streets and sidewalks, and in which, together with benches, lampposts, and other ornamental elements, highlighted its meticulous gardening. The larger plot would then be planted with the ceiba tree, designated the \u201cTree of American Fraternity,\u201d and which, according to some sources, was brought from the town of San Antonio de los Ba\u00f1os and, according to others, from the Cerro neighborhood.<\/span><\/p>\n