CU colon cemetery
30 Oct 2001

South Florida Sun-Sentinel - HAVANA - Walking the tree-lined streets of the Christopher Columbus Cemetery, past mausoleums topped with ascending angels, elaborate black-and-white marble tombs and chapels shaped like medieval castles, is like flipping through the pages of Cuba's history. From disgraced presidents to independence hero Máximo Gómez and even Alberto Yarini, Havana's notorious early 1900s gentleman pimp, this is one of Latin America's most renowned cemeteries, a who's who of poets, politicians and prerevolutionary socialites. Marked avenues are laid on a grid pattern in this city of the dead, which celebrated its 130th anniversary last Tuesday. It has an estimated population of about 2 million people, and officials say each year about 20,000 people -- some 80 percent of those who die in Havana -- are buried here.   Although private sales are outlawed in communist Cuba, the cemetery is one of the only places where Cubans can still buy and sell property. For several hundred dollars, Cubans can buy a burial plot. However, cemetery officials say few Cubans have the cash needed to rest eternally. Most families pay about $4 for a tomb for two years. After that, remains are disinterred, boxed and filed away in a building at the back of the cemetery.  Latin jazz legend Chano Pozo, writers Alejo Carpentier, Fernando Ortiz and poet Nicolás Guillén are buried here, as is Cuban film director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, who spent a lifetime casting his ironic gaze at Cuban society with films such as Death of a Bureaucrat (1966) and the Oscar-nominated Strawberry and Chocolate (1993). Most visitors are drawn to the Columbus Cemetery's many unusual graves, such as the one topped with a large, double-three domino for Juana Martín de Martín, an avid dominoes player who suffered a heart attack after losing a game. She died clutching the double three -- the piece she had reserved for her win.  Wisconsin native Jeanette Ryder's final resting place is known as the tomb of loyalty. After her death in 1931, Ryder's dog, Rinti, curled up at her tomb and refused groundskeepers' offers of food and water until he died. A sculpture at the gravesite depicts woman's best friend lying at Ryder's feet. Undoubtedly, the most visited tomb is that of La Milagrosa (the Miraculous One), Amelia Goyri, a young heiress who forsook her fortune to marry the man she loved. Goyri died in childbirth in 1901 only 11 months after her marriage. After Goyri's death her widower, José Vicente Adot, paid daily visits to the cemetery, knocking on her tomb with its brass handles as if to wake her from a deep sleep. He would then spend long hours talking to the statue he commissioned in her honor. According to legend, 13 years after Goyri's death, when Adot requested his wife's coffin be opened, her body was completely intact. The stillborn baby girl, who had been laid at her feet, was now nestled in her arms just as the statue depicted. Today, scores of pilgrims arrive at her tomb every day, leaving gladiolas, engraved marble plaques, baby clothes and loose change to Goyri, who they say grants miracles, mostly to mothers. Maria Antonia Ruíz Guzmán credits La Milagrosa with helping her overcome severe depression in the late '80s. Since then, Ruíz Guzmán has devoted herself to maintaining Goyri's grave and spreading word of her miracles. "I was almost catatonic; nothing mattered to me. I think the hand of God and Amelia helped me," said Ruíz Guzmán, who added that she has hundreds of written and taped testimonials from others who have been touched by La Milagrosa.
Associated Press - HAVANA - Eastern Cuba was drying out after heavy rains earlier in the week caused a river to overflow, briefly forcing several thousand people from their homes, state media said. There were no reports of injuries or deaths. The Sagua River in Sagua de Tanamo in the eastern state of Holguin, overflowed overnight and caused the evacuation of more than 3,000 people, state television said. Sagua de Tanamo is in a remote area in the easternmost part of the Caribbean island. Of those evacuated, about 950 people were housed temporarily in government shelters, according to the government broadcast late Tuesday. About 400 homes were flooded, it added. A woman who answered the telephone at the provincial newspaper Ahora on Wednesday said the rains had stopped and many of the evacuees were returning home.