In 1920s a city master plan was
developed, and in 1925, it was accredited by Gerardo Machado, the fifth
president of Republic of Cuba. According to the
master plan, the city’s road networks were connected while
accentuating some prominent landmarks, such as parks. The
same year, the French landscape architect Jean-Claude
Nicolas Forestier (1861-1930) undertook the project of
building a recreational park in this area, so that he moved
to Havana for five years to collaborate with the Cuban
architects and landscape designers. His aim was to create a
balance between the classical built form and the tropical
landscape. The current layout of the park bases on the
project of Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier.
In 1928, the
celebration of the VI. Pan-American Conference was held in this
park that began to be known since then as the Plaza de la Fraternidad Americana, because a silk-cotton tree, called Árbol
de la Fraternidad Americana (Tree of the American Fraternity),
was planted in the center of the park on the soil, brought from
28 countries of the Americas that participated the VI.
Pan-American Conference. Formerly that ceiba was planted in the
neighborhood of Cerro on the day, when the Republic was
proclaimed in Cuba. A few years later, on the initiative of the
Sociedad Cubana de Estudios Históricos y Internacionales, busts
of some personalities of the Latin American thinking and
fraternity were erected. The project began with eight heroes of
America, but yet there are about 20 busts, including those
of Simón Bolivar (liberator of Venezuela), Benito Juárez
(President of Mexico), Toussaint Louverture (leader of the
Haitian Revolution), Abraham Lincoln (16. President of the US),
José de San Martín
(liberator of Argentina, Chile and Peru), Bernardo O'Higgins
(liberator of Chile), Juan Pablo Duarte (one of the fathers of
the Dominican Republic), Francisco Morazán (President
of the Federal Republic of Central America), José Gervasio
Artigas (liberator of
Uruguay), Leoncio Prado (Peruvian national hero), José Protacio
Rizal (Philippine nationalist poet and writer), Ramón Emeterio
Betances (one of the fathers of the Puerto Rican Nation and
medical doctor), Joaquim José da Silva Xavier (known as Tiradentes,
leading member of the Brazilian revolutionary movement), José
Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva (Brazilian statesman, naturalist,
professor and poet) etc.
Today the Parque de la Fraternidad is an
area of great public affluence due to the presence of metrobus
and omnibus stops that travel from and to that site. It is
currently one of the busiest areas in Havana. Many walkers stop
and sit on the benches and talk to each other while taking a
break. In a short period, it is possible to see a lot of old
American cars, saved from decadence and converted into
collective taxis. The close environment is enriched by the
presence of monumental buildings such as the Capitolio, the
Hotel Saratoga, the Aldama Palace, the Fuente de la India, the
Chinatown of Havana, all emblems of the Cuban capital city.
In the park there is abundant vegetation,
particularly consisted of real palms, distinctive attribute of
the Cuban nation. The historical ceiba tree is surrounded by an
iron fence, and the names of the personalities that “promise to
work solemnly for the American fellowship” are written on the
iron gate that gives access to the tree for the staff. There is
also a stone monument in the shape of a book on that the names
Cuban that fell for a free and independent Cuba, are written
with the phrase of José Martí: La muerte no es verdad cuando se
ha cumplido bien la obra de la vida; truecase en polvo el craneo
pensador, pero viven perpetuamente y furitifican los
pensamientos que en el se elaboraron. (Death is not true when
the work of life has been well fulfilled: the thinking skull
exchanges in dust, but they live perpetually and furitify the
thoughts that were elaborated in it.)
