A few meters away are the statues of Camões, Cervantes and Shakespeare on Calle de Mercaderes, in Old Havana. Not far from this avenue of notables is also the café “La Columnata Egipciana”, which today has been transformed into a memorial to one of the most famous patrons, the former consul of Portugal in the city, the writer José Maria Eça de Queiroz, who speaks well of the intensity of the cultural ties that unite Portugal and Cuba, first as a Spanish colony and since 1898 as a young independent republic.
With official diplomatic relations since 1919 (and informal since 1902), Portugal and Cuba never really turned their backs, even when Salazar granted political asylum to Fulgêncio Batista, the dictator deposed by the Cuban Revolution of 1959, after Franco ordered him to do so. refused because in order not to damage trade relations with the former colony.
But Portugal and Cuba are also united by a centuries-old common history. To demonstrate this, the Portuguese Academy of History and the Institute of History of Cuba, with the support of the Camões Institute, launched the book Portuguese and Marks of Portugal in Cubaat a ceremony attended by that country’s ambassador to Lisbon, Yusmari Díaz.
The work, an initiative of the Portuguese Embassy in Cuba, brings together the research work of historians in both countries on testimonies of the Portuguese presence on the island where Christopher Columbus landed in 1492, whether in terms of built heritage, written documents or religion. As the Portuguese Manuela Mendonça and Maria Odete Martins write in the introduction, the beginnings of the Portuguese presence on the island of Cuba date back to its colonization, which was accentuated during the Iberian Union (1580-1640): “But the presence of the Portuguese in Cuba was not limited to that time. In later times, this presence would continue, especially after the restoration of independence, when the kingdom’s interests turned more towards Brazil. Numerous commercial circuits were created.”
Odete Martins went to the National Archives of Torre do Tombo, in Portugal, to the Archivo General de las Indias, Archivo de la Nobleza, in Spain, and found many traces of Portuguese who went to sea at some point in their lives and claimed Cuban land on. Among them those of Boza or Bouza de Lima: “Family of converts originally from the north of Portugal, more precisely from the region of Braga, it is believed that they lived in the parish of Refoios do Lima, given the name they later adopted (…).” Or António de Chaves, who was captain and owner of the ship Nuestra Señora del Carmen, which sailed to the West Indies. But also Pimenteis, Silvas, Vasconcelos, who in 1607 led the Captain General of the island to confirm the existence of a community of Portuguese in Havana, mainly devoted to the transatlantic trade, namely slaves destined for sugar cane plantations.
Many centuries later, Portugal would also be one of the first European countries to recognize the independence of the new republic (as happened to other former Spanish colonies in Latin America), but in this case, as noted by historian Yoel Cordovi Nunez, president of the Instituto History of Cuba, there were also several descendants of Portuguese involved in the liberation campaigns. Among them, the descendants of the aforementioned Bouza or Boza family, such as General Manuel Boza y Agromonte or Bernabé Boza y Sanchez Pereira, who suffered a disastrous fate, as he was executed by Spanish troops before he could see Cuba gain independence.
In addition to the documentary remains, there is also no shortage of built heritage pieces commissioned by wealthy Portuguese. Through this work we get to know one of the oldest houses in Havana, built in the 17th century by order of Gaspar Ribeiro de Vasconcelos, “a native of Tangiers, in Morocco”. But there is also news about António Parra Calado, born in Tavira, who was the author of the first scientific work published in Cuba in 1787, Descripcion de diferent piezas de Historia Natural, las más del branch maritimo, representadas en setenta y cinco slats.
The most distinguished of our men in Havana, however, was the writer Eça de Queiroz, who was posted there at the age of 27 as first-class consul. Although the city was already a vibrant jewel of the Spanish Antilles, this was not the post the young diplomat dreamed of, who had imagined himself in the cosmopolitan world of Paris or London. Still, Eça made an effort and “realized how the Chinese coolies, who had emigrated to Cuba from the port of Macau, were being treated, and he informed his superiors about the matter in detail in reports sent to Lisbon.”
There were consequences for the consul-writer’s humanitarian persistence: soon the governor of Macau would no longer allow the use of this port for emigration purposes. In March of the following year, a Chinese commissioner was scheduled to travel to Cuba to personally deal with the matter with local authorities. In 1874, the consul was due to return to Europe, but his brand was immortalized in a café in Old Havana.
Source: DN
