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The Historical Course of the Sanctuary in El Cobre 

In the middle of the 17th century, the statue of the Virgen became the most venerated one in all the region. Unfortunately, the ecclesiastical hierarchy and the white santiagueros faithful boycotted this devotion that was professed by the slaves, free mulattos, native Indians and even by the white officials of the administration of the copper mines. They didn’t want that this section of the public would take part in the cult of the eastern bishopric. Also, they didn’t believe so much in the legends about the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre.

The promotion of the cult of Cachita and the recognition of her sanctuary in El Cobre by the Cathedral of Santiago begun only in the late 17th century. This occurred by the pressure of the creoles of Spanish origin from Jamaica, but not by the native creole landowners. As the consequence of the gradual creolization of the Virgin, some hermitages for her cult were erected throughout the island, such as in Sancti Spiritus (1717), in Puerto Príncipe (today Camagüey) (1734), and in Havana (1747).

In 1801, the king of Spain decreed that all Cuban slaves from the copper mines in El Cobre would be freed. Shortly before this royal decree, a young slave girl, named Apolonia, claimed that she saw the Virgin at the top of the hill close to the copper mines, while she was pursuing butterflies and picking flowers with her mother. Although most of the villagers did not believe in the words of Apolonia, the news spread with amazing rapidity throughout the island despite the difficult conditions of communication, so that finally they came to conclusion that all these events had a special reason and the Blessed Virgin, that was not happy in her present place, had chosen that place close to the copper mines purposely.  Subsequently, they decided that it would be best to move the Virgin’s statue to that place on the Sierra mountains, so that they erected a new church there. This place is her final resting place. Later folk legends circulating through the island endowed the Virgen de la Caridad with the power to grant wishes and heal the sick, and a steady flow of believers visited the church to solicit her help. The pilgrims took with them tiny stones from the mine, where the copper particles were shining and kept them in their houses in water glasses, pockets, or bags after having blessed them in front of the Virgin’s sanctified statue, as a form of souvenir and as protection against evils or perhaps as a good light for the personal and family future, as well as for the miraculous healing.

In the 19th century, when the Catholic Church considered the augmentation of its hegemony necessary to settle down the fear of its cult for slave revolts, it begun to adorn the legends about the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre to attract the proselytes and by this way to strengthen its ties with the community. Thus, the native Indian Rodrigo Hoyos in the legend was renamed Juan Diego and the “three Juanes” became fishermen, even though Juan Moreno was an Afro-Cuban slave, and the Indian Hoyos brothers were simple ranchers. Furthermore, finding of the statue was described as the saving of the three shipwrecked boys by the Virgin.

In 1884, the bishop of Santiago de Cuba ordered to print stamps of the Virgin, but the native Indian brothers and the black slave were represented as three boys that were white, Indian, and black. The ecclesiastical hierarchy wanted to show its sovereignty on all ethnic groups of the island. In successive prints they appeared as a white, a mulatto and a black, or as three whites, or as three blacks; sometimes they became four, instead of three (two Indians and two blacks). Of all these, the representation that spread in Cuba was that of 'three Juanes': two whites paddling at each end of the boat, one with a beard and another hairless, and a little black man praying in the center to the Virgin for that helps them from the imminent shipwreck. The adaptation of the mestiza features of the image of the Virgin facilitated the different ethnic groups to identify themselves somatically with them.

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, during the Cuban War of Independence, the esteem that the Santiagueros were professing for the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, was so great, that some anecdotes begun to be narrated all over the country, such as Antonio Maceo wore a medal of the Virgin of Cobre always on in his underwear at the urging of his mother Grajales; Céspedes used the blue fabric of the canopy of the image of the Virgin to make his first banner; the mambises were celebrating the September 8 in the camps as the day devoted to the Virgin of Cobre and were dedicating couplets to her; every October 10 the Cuban in exiles were asking Cachita for the independence of the island. But in fact, neither Céspedes, nor the other leaders of the Cuban War of Independence, didn’t consider it a symbol of the creole unity, but they never used the devotion to the charity to mobilize the people to support the war of independence or a myth that would trigger a patriotic crusade, because such a type of cult was close to the traditional anti-independence character of Catholic. They didn’t controvert when people felt that the mambises were entrusted to the Virgin of Charity. Therefore, Our Lady of Charity acquired the widely accepted title La Virgen Mambisa or the Virgin for Cuban Independence at the end of the 19th century. The Cuban General Calixto Garcia had bowed in front of the image during a Holy Mass that had been held in honor of the resistance of the mambises, and maybe this gesture had played a role in this denomination.

In 1906 the sanctuary collapsed due to excavations and explosions carried out by mining companies in the area.

In 1915, the veterans of the War of Independence wrote a letter petitioning the Pope Benedict XV to honor Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre as Patroness of their country. Subsequently, in 1916 the Pope Benedict XV declared her Patroness of Cuba, and September 8 was recognized as her official feast day.

The sanctuary has been expanded later to accommodate the growing number of the pilgrims. The statue was moved to its current sanctuary in El Cobre, inaugurated on September 8, 1927. This is her third and last sanctuary in El Cobre. 

In 1936, Pope Pius XI granted a canonical coronation for the statue during the Eucharistic Congress in Santiago de Cuba.

Santiago, the fishing captain from the famous book, “The Old Man and the Sea / El Viejo y el Mar” by Ernest Hemingway, promises to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to God to make a pilgrimage to the Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, if he would be able catch the big fish. After Ernest Hemingway had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 by his work “The Old Man and the Sea”, he made his own pilgrimage to the shrine of Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre and offered his Nobel prize award, a medallion, to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is likely that Ernest Hemingway made the same promise to himself that Santiago made and clearly the prize was “the big fish”.

In 1977, Pope Paul VI elevated the sanctuary to the rank of the basilica. 

In 1998, the Virgin of Charity was crowned by Pope Paul II as Queen and Patron of Cuba in the Holy Mass during his apostolic visit to Santiago de Cuba.

Pope Benedict XVI awarded a golden rose in honor of the image that was placed in her shrine in 2012. Subsequently, Pope Francis enshrined a brass statue given to Pope Benedict XVI by the Cuban bishops within the gardens of the Vatican City in 2016. The image consisted of 14 Marian images that would be permanently enshrined in the gardens by the pontifical mandate due to her holiness.  

The Virgin of Charity left her sanctuary only five times: 

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