Homage to the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, Cuba’s Saint Patroness

Homage to the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, Cuba’s Saint Patroness is the work to be exhibited by a group of Cuban artists on September 6 – 7, at the National Theater’s Covarrubias Hall, in Havana, as a tribute to the worshiped saint that can be visited in her Sanctuary, in El Cobre, Santiago de Cuba.

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The piece, that puts together elements of both visual and performing arts, extols national values and the presence of the Virgin in different stages in the history of the largest of the Antilles, pro-independence wars and the daily life of the people.

The cast is made up of actors Lázaro Velazco, Yolanda Molenillo, Edilia Fuentes, Saúl Seijó, Daniel Estévez, Diana Acebo O´Farril, Sthefhanie Velazco, Eduardo Puig and Adrián Castro, orator Iván Pérez, dancer Martha Rosa Pérez, singers Cristina Rodríguez, Dayamí Pérez, Henry Méndez and Bernardo Lichilín.

Professor Pura Ortiz will play the piano, with the musical direction by Gladys Puig, and Lázaro Velazco’s original idea, script and general direction.

Cuba’s Patron Saint has become a symbol of national identity, also known as the Mambi Virgin; when the independence feeling began to spread among Cubans, the women started to wear a small medal to express their liberating ideals.

In 1851, votive masses were given in Camagüey and the colonial power labeled them insurrectionary. When the Father of our Homeland, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, needed blue cloth to make the first flag, he took it from the dossal of the image worshiped by his wife.

During the Pro-independence Wars, started in 1868, the members of the Liberating Army were used to expressing their love to the Virgin of the Cobre and praying to her before combat.

In 2013, when the 33rd edition of the Caribbean Festival was held in Santiago de Cuba, the cultural scenery of Cobre, where the cathedral that houses the image of the Virgin is based, and the path to the Patron Saint of Cuba, were declared National Heritage of the Republic.

In 2012, the Caribbean nation celebrated the 400th anniversary of the find of the Virgin of Charity in Nipe’s bay, which is recalled every September 8.