Havana’s Origin. Reasons for the Uncertainty of the Date of Celebrations.
By: Liborio País
Last Novembrer 16th, the city of San Cristóbal de La Habana celebrated its 490 birthday. As happens every year, long lines of Cubans and foreign visitors went to the Ceiba tree to follow the tradition of making a wish as they go around the tree located in an old colonial building, the Shrine. The Shrine Ceremony was carried out with the usual presence of Eusebio Leal, the justly worshipped historian of Havana City. Several events took place in the Cuban capital to celebrate once more the arrival of this important date for the city inhabitants. Not a few foreign visitors were curious enough to go see this celebration, so they tried to schedule their Cuba vacations on the eleventh month to take with them images of this popular tradition which has become stronger with time although, actually, many people do not know that this tradition does not correspond exactly with the true history.
It has never been proved in any archives that it was on November 16, 1519, when San Cristobal de La Habana was founded. During centuries, a lot of research has been carried out with this purpose and nothing has been demonstrated, for there are no archives of the Town Council of Havana before 1550. The tradition started only due to the fact that in 1754, in the place where later on the shrine was going to be, and by order of governor Cajigal de la Vega, a three sided column with inscriptions related to the celebration under a ceiba tree was set. Also the first mass was celebrated and the gathering of the first Havana Town Council at the moment the city was settled in the place it is today, besides Carenas Harbor. Havana was not always in the same place it is today, and there are several studies that talk about the city foundation. That is why it is not strange that a personality of Havana’s history such as Emilio Roig de Leushering, wrote once: “The foundation of Havana is immersed in a deep darkness. It can only be said with certainty that Havana was founded by the Spanish colonists by order and instruction of Diego Velazquez. The history is that vague”. Old time chronicles read that the original date was on July 25, 1515, about 4 years before the accepted date, and American historian Irene A. Wright in her documented book San Cristobal de La Habana in the 16 Century, claimed it was on July 25, 1514. The month of July as the probable date instead of November, is motivated by the celebration on that same month around those years of the ceremonies in honor to San Cristobal, until Pope Leon X decided that it be changed to November 16 so that they would not interfere with the celebration of Santiago Apostle, patron of Spain and its posessions. Taking this into account, it is probable that November had been favored by word of mouth, which is definitely the main basis of tradition, and which, does not usually pay much attention to details such as the Pope’s decisions in relation to saint celebrations. In further research, it has been made clear that it is imposible for Havana to have been founded on July, 1915 for there are official documents that prove that in that date neither Diego Velazquez nor Panfilo de Narvaez, top personalities of colonial power in the island at the beginning of the 16th century, could have founded it, because between April 18 and August 1 of the already mentioned year, they were both very busy in the East of the country. Signed letters by each of them in that period proved they were far from the West. That is why the hypothesis of 1514 as the date of the foundation of the first city in the East of the island, not in the Northern coast but on the South, should be favored. Panfilo de Narváez founded the city of San Cristobal in a place between today’s Batabano neigborhood and the Cortes inlet. As time passed, the first inhabitants of Havana moved to the North looking for fresh water, finding the Casiguagua River, which is nowadays known as Almendares. Along the Almendares banks, they got to its mouth in the Northern coast. It is said that this movement was not organized but a progressive flow of people from the South to the new settlement until there was a moment in which “two Havanas” existed, one in the North and other in the South. Something similar happened later when two other settlements prevailed for many years: the already mentioned at the Almendares mouth and the one located next to the best sea inlet in that area of the Northern coast: Carenas Harbor. When the city got to the site that in time will be its bay, and always looking the proximity to a river that would guarantee fresh water, Havana was first located at the end of Carenas Harbor where today the Luyano River runs into. That place guaranteed the fresh water, but since it was surrounded by swamps, “the battle” with the mosquitos was constant, as it is commun in this kind of place. The mosquitos seem to have won the battle for Havana’s inhabitants were forced to move closer to Havana’s harbor which is the place where the first mass was finally celebrated and the first Town Council gathered, which had been inmortalized somehow with Cajigal’s column and with the pictures inside the Shrine at the Arms Square in the historical center of Havana City. In spite of all the above mentioned, there is no certitude on the historical facts related to the popular tradition of the foundation of Havana City. As we said before, the only thing that perpetuates the tradition of the celebrations in Havana on November 16, the only thing that we can prove nowadays in relation to the foundation of the city is the presence inside the Shrine at the Arms Square of the three sided column portraying the mass and the gathering of the first Town Council. The paintings that decorate the interior walls of the Shrine refer to these foundation events. It is said that such events took place at the shade of a leafy ceiba tree that existed in that same place in the 16 century. This is not true either. At the moment that Havana was established in the 16 century in the place it is today, the main square of the incipient city was not where the Arms Square is nowadays. The main square of the city was next to the Royal Force Castle, but it was not the fortress that we know today but the first fortress built with that name. The first fortress of the Royal Force was somewhere else. That is to say, that not even the place venerated during centuries by the people of Havana corresponds with the actual events that took place. Nevertheless, we have to accept that, sometimes, fiction has better aura than reality itself. Let the city continue enjoying its already ancestral tradition even if history turns away.





