Streeets with faces in the Village of Puerto Príncipe.

With everything, every time that I visit to my town, and I travel him lovingly, already with very few friends of those that left more than forty years ago, finish my walk in front of those relics... *

Nicolás Guillén

Por:Yanetsy León González

Camagüey, Jan 18 . At some time do you planned to see the official face of the streets? In Cuba it never happened same thing, but Camagüey began to give the note only one week ago with the placement of badges with the image of the personalities or of the facts that suggest the toponyms and believe me, there is expensive that bring them to him.



Rejuvenate vetusta square of Camagüey.

The new pieces with the name of the streets and the relief of what they represent 30 x 40 cm. measure, and they are placed according to the height of each construction.

Of brass they seem, although they are made with mud of Camagüey in the technical rakú. Of the artisans artists Néstor Liván Peña Díaz and Aníbal Verdecia Blanco got the idea of this luck of permanent exhibition in the homeland, project that signs up to Aníbal Díaz, Jorge Herrera and Maikel Blanco, its partners of the shop of ceramic EFRA. Néstor Liván and Aníbal, son, assumed the location for the care in the manipulation, and because it facilitates them a peculiar socialization of the work.

If it tunes the view, will discover the distribution of the new signs in corners and converged places. Until the moment the initiative of the Office of the Historian of the City (OHCC) understands 23 streets of the area of the Urban Historical Center considered in the List of the World Patrimony from July of the 2008.

TO PASS THE THOUSAND AND A...

The Department of Historical Investigations of the OHCC selected the photographic, cartographic and historical material of each appellative, and it has spent the thousand and one nights with some.

Most of the visual information comes from pictures, but the prints of the Parents Olallo and Valencia, for logic, they leave of drawings of previous centuries. The same option left the siblings Diego and Gaspar Agüero Betancourt, thanks to the similar work conserved in the Provincial Historical File.

Also the Department of Strange and Valuable Fund of the Provincial Library Julio Antonio Mella dissolved another dilemma, when locating a postcard with the historian's figure Juan Torres Lasquetti (before San Pablo).

Has not still been the doctor's graphic indication Emilio González Hurtado who completed his medical service in the homonymous hospital of the old street San Juan of God, and where it cured sick of the influenza.

On the other hand, of Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, well-known as The Villager, yes they had references, but of figure little favored. In a same way they took care the details of the reliefs and the personality, as that of Rosa La Bayamesa (old San Isidro) with the mambisa hat, similar to the instantaneous of the gun.

SInce the first rotule, that of Cisneros, corner to Martí, the restlessness arose for the cases that are not distinguished with own names. Then they cleared the doubts with the two flags: the national one and that of La Demajagua, reserved for Independence and the Shield for Republic.

ALSO BILINGUAL SIGNS?

Maybe the design dazzles as much as the intention of incorporating aesthetic elements for the embellishment of the city, awaiting the official declaration on behalf of the Urban Historical Center as Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity.

Since the contemporary language suppose the assumption of most of the names countersigned by the City council in the XX century. Only the first additions with the toponyms date of 1939.

Clear, now it is not badges fused with inscriptions in Braille for the tactile identification, like happens in Peru; neither of linguistic variants as the plurilingual signalings in European countries.

But who stops the diatribe of the inhabitants' love that continue offering according to the Catholic calendar, when the constructive landmarks marked the route. Insurance will jump some historian like Frizzy Fernando Baró, specialist of the OHCC, to say “the Cuban identity knows how to distinguish between the old thing and the modern thing, between the historical thing and the current thing. In that there have not been contradictions.”

But in people, always in people, the germinal marks survive and still today “all the roads lead to Rome”, like indicated the disposition of the paths made by the Roman army from the headquarters of that empire to move to other places.

The villager takes the bilingual print inside in terms of feelings, for example with the street San Ramón, of 25 blocks, so similar to a horseshoe; Avellaneda, the first one with woman's name or the old Alley of the Gallería, by the way, without exit and with the only entrance for Lope Recio, where in one of the houses they raised roosters of you fight.

Of officialdom the famous historian of the city spoke to Gustavo Sed Nieves in the section “My dear streets of Camagüey”, here in the Adelante newspaper ,since the originated documental reference of April 30 1627 about the Real Street—become bigger Street and then Salvador Cisneros—for the notary's registration Silvestre de Balboa Troya and Quesada.

The laws in fact arose to order according to the address of the winds of the time. Otherwise, how to contain the faces of this town, of real live stories in those public spaces enriched in 495 years to complete the next one February 2, when the Village de Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe.