{"id":300307,"date":"2024-04-18T16:39:52","date_gmt":"2024-04-18T20:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=300307"},"modified":"2024-04-18T16:39:52","modified_gmt":"2024-04-18T20:39:52","slug":"isla-verde-an-iceberg-in-the-fiery-caribbean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba\/science-cuba\/cuban-environment\/isla-verde-an-iceberg-in-the-fiery-caribbean\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cIsla Verde\u201d: an iceberg in the fiery Caribbean"},"content":{"rendered":"

With his environmental passion, Jorge Perugorr\u00eda would be bringing Isla de la Juventud closer to adding another to the exuberant and long list of names of the special municipality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Isla Verde<\/span><\/i>? Why not?<\/span><\/p>\n

Before, it was, ephemerally baptized, <\/span>San Juan Evangelista<\/span><\/i>, as Christopher Columbus called it on his second voyage when he arrived on its coast in June 1494; <\/span>Santiago<\/span><\/i>, a proposal by Diego Vel\u00e1zquez; <\/span>Santa Mar\u00eda<\/span><\/i>, by royal order; <\/span>Ahao<\/span><\/i>, stipulated by King Ferdinand the Catholic in 1525, based on a calligraphic nonsense that his ignorance did not amend.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is more. <\/span>San Paulo <\/span><\/i>or<\/span> San Pauli,<\/span><\/i> according to the Italian cartographer Maggiolo. <\/span>Isla de Pinos<\/span><\/i>, according to statements by the Grand Admiral\u2019s servant, the Portuguese Juan de Salcedo, referring to what the sailors said when admiring the copious coniferous forests.<\/span><\/p>\n

Likewise, there is also <\/span>Guanaxa<\/span><\/i>, a mere confusion with an island of the same name in the Gulf of Honduras; <\/span>Reina Amalia<\/span><\/i>, in homage to the third wife of Fernando VII, and <\/span>Camaraco<\/span><\/i>, derived from the indigenous voice Camarc\u00f3, an indigenous town on the left bank of the Arimao River, in the central-southern province of Cienfuegos.<\/span><\/p>\n

Outside of the official or unofficial geo-nomenclatures, historiography and literature listed some other must-sees:<\/span><\/p>\n

Isla de los Piratas<\/span><\/i>, for being a busy base for privateers and pirates, smuggling trade and illicit extraction of natural resources; <\/span>Treasure Island<\/span><\/i>, for all of the above plus the novel of the same name by the Englishman Robert L. Stevenson; <\/span>Isla de las Cotorras<\/span><\/i>, given the former abundance of such chattering parrots; and <\/span>Siberia de Cuba<\/span><\/i>, for being a wasteland for political deportees during the Spanish colonial regime.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1930s, a political prisoner who would later die for the Spanish Republic, Pablo de la Torriente Brau, called it <\/span>La isla de los 500 asesinatos<\/span><\/i>, in reference to his experience in the Model Prison, from which he wrote carnal reports about the violence of the dictatorship in turn.<\/span><\/p>\n

Isla de la Juventud, not so much now<\/h3>\n

Of all the nominations, <\/span>Isla de Pinos<\/span><\/i> persevered. It wasn\u2019t forever. A Babelic educational program inaugurated in 1977 with thousands of students, mainly African \u2014 although there were also Mongolians and North Koreans \u2014 moved Fidel Castro to rename the 2,419 square kilometer territory, then covered in citrus fields in a sort of Eden of the Global South.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, as decades passed, some of the African political cadres who have been or are Cuba\u2019s interlocutors graduated from those schools as high school graduates. Others studied university degrees in the Caribbean country. For many, those efforts were an investment in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since 1978, and until now, the territory, located about 170 kilometers south of Havana and with just over 80,000 inhabitants, has enjoyed lexical rest.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are no more citrus trees, nor are there any foreign students (who reached close to 20,000), but its splendid nature remains, which the famous actor, director and plastic artist Jorge Perugorr\u00eda intends to turn into his best work outside the sets: an ecological laboratory that is paradigmatic in the insular Caribbean.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that projects related to sustainable agriculture can be developed and stimulate entrepreneurship and sustainable tourism on the island, which has all the conditions for it,\u201d said the actor, 59, during a press conference this Friday at the Gorr\u00eda Gallery Workshop.<\/span><\/p>\n

The property is a LDP, Local Development Program, authored by the activist to promote the plastic arts in the San Isidro neighborhood, a port community and former brothel associated with one of the city\u2019s black legends: the pimp of Italian origin Alberto Yarini, killed by five bullets in 1910.<\/span><\/p>\n

Isla Verde, el viaje a la luna de Jorge Perugorr\u00eda<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n