The Secret about the Statue of the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre
The Nipe Bay (Bahia de Nipe), located
in the north-eastern part of the island, was an important source
of salt that was used in the curing of the meat. According to
the legend, around the year 1612, three boys from Barajagua went
out in search for salt to Nipe Bay, the largest bay in Cuba.
They had to find salt for the preservation of the meat in
slaughterhouse in their town Barajagua that supplied the workers
of the copper mine and the inhabitants of Santiago del Prado,
now known as El Cobre. Traditionally they were given the moniker
“three Juanes (los tres Juanes)”; in fact, only two of them were
brothers (Juan and Rodrigo de Hoyos) of indigenous descent, and
the third (Juan Moreno) was an Afro-Cuban. They were probably
around 10 years old at that time.
The boys on the canoe could reach
only half of the bay, because a storm was approaching to them,
rocking their tiny boat violently with incoming waves. They had
to refuge to somewhere, so that they camped at the mouth of the
Mayari River that was closed by a delta called Cayo Francés or
La Vigía at that time. Juan was wearing a medal with the image
of the Virgin Mary. The boys begun to pray to God to survive the
storm. Suddenly, the sky cleared, and the storm ceased, so that
they resumed their search for the salt flats on the coast. After
a short time, they saw a white object floating over the top of
the waves and approaching them slowly. At first, they thought
that it was a sea bird or a dry branch, but when they came
closer, they saw that it was the statue of the Virgin Mary,
carrying the Baby Jesus in her left arm and a golden cross in
her right hand. The statue was fastened to a wooden board with
an inscription on it: "Yo Soy la Virgen de la Caridad (I am the
Virgin of Charity)". According to the legend, they noticed that
the statue remained completely dry despite the storm and the big
waves.
When
the boys went back to the shore, they hurried up to Barajagua,
being extremely happy about that what they had found. When they
showed the statue to Captain Francisco Sánchez de Moya that was
the administrator of the mines of that place, he ordered to
build a shrine in honor of the Virgin and assigned Rodrigo de
Hoyos as chaplain of the shrine. This initial sanctuary was
built in an improvised manner, using guano leaves and boards.
Later the statue was placed first in a small altar, then to the
main altar of the catholic church in Barajagua. One night the
statue disappeared and reappeared in the morning with wet dress.
During the three years that the statue stayed in this chapel,
this inconceivable event repeated two or three times, even
though the doors of the chapel were locked.
Finally, the people living in
Barajagua decided that the Blessed Virgin wanted to be moved to
another spot, so that in 1620, they placed the statue in the
parish church, the Parochial Temple (Templo Parroquial) in the
town Real de Minas (today El Cobre) that was possessing one of
the largest open-air copper veins of America (cobre means copper
in Spanish). In 1648, it was transferred to a new hermitage
built on the top of the hill Santiago del Prado in El Cobre. The
Virgin was greeted by ringing of bells and great joy in her new
home, where it was placed on the high altar.
After the transfer, she became known as La
Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre or Our Lady of Charity of
El Cobre (Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Cobre).
For more than two centruies the statue had remained in
this sanctuary. Much to the dismay of the people in El Cobre,
the disappearance of the statue continued to happen.
Although this story was narrated in
the affidavit that Juan Moreno made under ecclesiastical oath
when he was 85 years old, history and legend are mixed in the
story of the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre. According to the
official records, in 1597 the Spanish King Felipe II assigned
Captain Francisco Sánchez de Moya the task to go to the mines of
the Sierra del Cobre to defend the shores from the attacks of
the English pirates. The king commissioned him also to erect a
shrine, a place where soldiers and miners could go to make their
prayers to the venerated image of the Virgin of Charity that
would protect them. Before his departure the captain ordered a
replica of the statue of the Virgin to be carved in Illescas, a
province in Toledo, Spain, where a similar statue of the Virgin
Mary of Charity was already well-venerated. Legend recalls that
the statue in Toledo was copied from a “Saint Luke” image and
brought by Saint Paul the Apostle to Toledo between the year 50
and 60 A.D. Captain’s ship that was carrying the statue, was
wrecked on a coral reef in the Caribbean, and the floating
statue arrived in Cuba. It is also claimed that in each attempt
of the church officials to return the statue to Spain, there
occurred something unexpected, so that the statue stayed in
Cuba. They took this as a sign that she wanted to stay in Cuba.
On the other hand, it explains why the Cubans feel a special
attachment to her. Cuban refer to her lovingly as “cachita”.
