San Carlos de La Cabaña: a Fortress at the Wrong Time and Through the Times.
By: Liborio País
San Carlos de la Cabaña is the complete name of the largest colonial fortress among those built by the Spanish in America and one of the most frequently visited daily in the whole world. Thanks to the celebration of a curious Havana tradition within the limits of this fortress, its squares are crowded every night with a lot of visitors, nationals and foreign, who have multiplied its fame all over the world. Its 700 meters of length and its 10 hectares of fortified area give good evidence of the interest the metropolis had in defending its domination of Havana around the second half of the 18th century. They actually regretted not having built it before; I will thereupon explain the meaning of the title of this article.
The East side of the channel that gives access to Havana Bay is characterized by the presence of a hill from which you can see the whole bay, as well as a good deal of the city. It was known as the La Cabaňa (hut) Hill because of a fishermen’s hut that existed on its top, in the proximity of the village of Havana.
The strategic importance of these hills for the organization of the harbor and city defense was evident since the very beginning. When the engineering studies were made to construct the Morro Castle at the entrance of the harbor at the end of the 16th century, the principal engineer in charge of the work, the Italian Bautista Antonelli, said that La Cabaňa Hill had to be secured for “he who possessed it would posses the city”.
The owner of the land where this geographical accident was located, Don Agustin Sotolongo, donated his land to the Spanish authorities so that they could build a fortress.
Nevertheless, and in spite of the series of projects that succeeded each other during the first half of the 18th century, it was not only after the experience of having Havana taken by the English troops in 1762 that Spain definitively decides to fortify these hills. It was from la Cabaňa Hill that the English opened cannon fire against the city and the Morro Castle during the attack. The city could not maintain its defenses since the shooting was also carried out from the inside, and so it fell in the hands of the attackers.
To get Havana back, the Spanish had to give away its domains in Florida to the English Crown.
After ceding the Florida peninsula, in July 1763, Spain recovered Havana and because of this experience, it ordered the immediate construction of three important fortresses: San Carlos de La Cabaňa, the largest of all; Atares Castle, at Soto Hill, in the South of the Bay and the Prince Castle, near to the current Square of the Revolution. Besides, at Triscornia Hill, in Casablanca, the Hornabeque de San Diego was built, a fortress considered as part of La Cabaňa.
With this assignment, the new Captain General of the Island, Ambrosio Funes de Villalpando, Count of Ricla, arrived in the city in the company of the military engineer of the Spanish Royal Army, brigadier Don Silvestre Abarca, who was in charge of these works ordered by the Crown.
On November 4, 1763, the construction started with a budget of 200 000 pesos a month and using as the main labor force the slaves of Cuba and prisoners, most of them Mexican. Eleven years after, on December 1774, the fortress was finished under the name of San Carlos in honor to Charles III, King of Spain, who ordered its construction, and La Cabaňa in reference to the place where it was built.
According to reports about the state of the garrison in 1858, the fortress could house 1500 men in common circumstances and up to 1800 in extraordinary situations, but if we take into account the information provided by such a well-known historian as Jacobo de la Pezuela, the total capacity of the fortress could be of 6000 men.
Because of the strategic military importance of this stronghold, it was protected by the elite military corps of the Spanish Crown during all the time that it was governed by the royal designs of Spain.
In spite of all the above, the fortress through the times has never participated even in a military skirmish through the times, for Havana has never been attacked again after the English taking of the 18th Century. In the absence of war actions, the fortress had been a jail and, during the last years, it has been a gallery where important museum collections of the colonial times have been exhibited.
But besides its importance in the history of the island, of its values in the universal military architecture and the impression that it could leave for the education of the new generations because of its worth as a museum, the people of Havana knows it better for its role as the protagonist of one of our dearest traditions that still endures: the 9 pm cannon shot. For more than two centuries, night after night, from its distinguished ceremony battery, we have been able to hear the thunder of one of its cannons to announce the inhabitants of the city that it is 9 pm sharp.
Of this dear tradition in Havana, its origins and ups and downs through the times we will be talking on next occasion.
After leaving