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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was here the day the eagle that used to be up there was knocked down,\u201d said the old man. \u201cDid you know there had been an eagle on top of those columns before?\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had heard about it,” I told him, “but I had never met someone who was witness to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI worked at a caf\u00e9 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\u2019t able to get close to the pieces and see them with my own eyes.”<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you think it was the right thing to do? To take it down?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt had to be done, kid. Americans were doing us a lot of harm, and that eagle was a symbol of the Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt still is, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. Now we\u2019re becoming friends with the Americans again. Maybe they’ll be given permission to put the eagle back up there.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI doubt it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWait and see. I don\u2019t 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.”<\/p>\n
\u201cDoves are the symbol of peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
The old man started laughing. \u201cI don\u2019t know who thought doves could symbolize peace. Those animals are nothing but troublemakers. Anyway, a dove might have looked better.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the end, they didn\u2019t install neither of the two.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI would have put an angel there, like the ones at the cemetery.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat would have been nice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I tell you, they are going to put the eagle back. You\u2019ll see. Didn\u2019t they put back the statue of that president…? The one on G Street\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not exactly the same.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, it is. Think about it and you\u2019ll see. Monuments are there to remind us of history.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut isn\u2019t the destruction of the eagle a part of history?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd our reconciliation with the Americans, isn\u2019t that a part of history as well?\u201d<\/p>\n
I smiled and nodded in agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnyway, that’s not for you or me to decide,” he said. “That’s handled by the higher-ups.”<\/p>\n
The man said good bye and went away, limping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. \u201cI was here the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2446,"featured_media":51017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13930],"tags":[11471],"ppma_author":[33671,7433],"class_list":["post-51175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technologies-of-communication-and-media","tag-u-s-cuba-relations"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n