To recharge our spiritual and cultural batteries
Cuban-Americans come to 'La Ermita'
En español: Para recargar nuestras baterías espirituales y culturales
los cubanoamericanos vienen a 'La Ermita'
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By Miguel Pérez
For me, attendance is compulsory. I cannot visit Miami without paying respects to Nuestra Señora de la Caridad. And so, I always spend some time at the ocean-front Shrine of Our Lady of Charity — La Ermita de la Caridad. This is where I recharge my Cuban spiritual and cultural batteries! This is where my soul gets an upgrade! Inside the 120-foot high, cone-shaped structure Cubans call “La Ermita,” a 15-inch tall wooden statuette rests on a marble altar. She is a brown-skin, dark-hair woman cradling the Child Jesus. She is dressed in a jeweled white mantilla, wearing a gold crown and surrounded by the rays of the sun. Behind the altar, from the floor to a very high ceiling, a very impressive mural, by Teok Carrasco and Orlando Cabañas, depicts the history of the Catholic Church in Cuba, making visits to La Virgen turn into history lessons. |
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So who is she and why is she so important to Cubans? Well, she is none other than the Virgin Mary, the one who saved the lives of three Cuban peasants in the late 16th century and became known as the patroness of the Cuban people.
Since then, Cubans have been telling stories about how "La Virgen de la Caridad" intervened in their lives, and making pilgrimages to see her — including me and my family, both when I was a kid and many years later when I was a newspaper reporter. You see, I was about to lose my left arm at the age of 10 when my father made a promise to "La Virgen." If she saved my arm from amputation, he swore, he would take me across Cuba, to see her in El Cobre, the hilltop shrine where she resides near Santiago de Cuba, Oriente Province. |
CUBA'S 'EL COBRE' AND MIAMI'S 'LA ERMITA'
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I had fallen off a playground slide, landing on my left elbow and crushing my bones into numerous pieces. Of course, with today's medicine, putting Humpty Dumpty back together again would seem plausible. But in the "Revolutionary Cuba" of the early 1960s, after several failed efforts to put my bones together, doctors had told my parents that they were giving it one last try. Otherwise, amputation above my elbow would be the only recourse.
After waiting weeks for the swelling to go down, the doctors set out to use a different, "innovative" method. They would figure out when all my bones were in the right place by conducting the entire painful procedure on an X-Ray table and shooting numerous images until they solved the puzzle. And they were successful! But my farther was talking to "La Virgencita," and she was successful too! I had to wear a cast from my wrist to my shoulder for longer than I care to remember, and then endured painful physical therapy to straighten my arm. But when I fully recovered, we had a promise to keep at El Cobre. And we did! In fact, we had to do it in a rush. When we received visas and a date to come to the United States in early 1962, my mother said we had to leave immediately. My brother Beny was waiting for us in Miami. |
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But my father would not agree to leave until we kept his promise to "la virgencita." So we took trains across the island, starting from La Salud, my native town in Havana Province, and visited El Cobre on a rushed and unforgettable weekend.
It was a wonderful experience: The cross-country train ride, the awesome sight of the El Cobre shrine perched on top of a hill, the look on my parents faces when they accomplished their goal of taking me there. It was the last trip we took as a family before we left Cuba. But my relationship with "La Virgencita" goes much further. Some 12 years after my train trip to El Cobre, I was close to graduating from college in Florida and working as a cub reporter for The Miami Herald when I learned that the Catholic Archdiocese was building a shrine for the Virgin Charity — for Cuban exiles who could no longer go to El Cobre. |
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It was more than 50 years ago, in 1973, and I felt I had to write that story for the newspaper.
There were some 400,000 Cubans in Miami then (less than half the size of that community now), but I knew that the opening ceremony would be attended by thousand of worshipers and that it would be a huge, front-page story. And so I teamed up with another cub reporter, my buddy Chuck Gomez, and together we convinced our editors to let us to cover "a really big story." As Cuban-Americans, we both wanted our names on the article that recorded that historic day. And we were successful! We not only got to cover the historic outdoor opening ceremony on Sunday, December 2, 1973 (see news clips below), but for a few days prior to the ceremony we had a chance to interview the key planners of the shrine, including its Cuban designer, architect José Benitóa — and to learn much more about La Virgen! |
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I remember showing the newspaper to my parents. I remember the pride reflected on their faces. We had our own very personal reason to smile. After the shrine was opened, I would go there with my mother, Lilia, and now I go with my daughter, Lilia.
Coming from devout parents, I already had a good understanding of La Virgen's story. But thinking back now, Chuck and I were privileged to talk the Rev. Agustin A. Roman about her miraculous appearance. He was considered the ultimate authority on La Virgen and had spent the previous seven years directing the shrine project, from fundraising to construction. Ironically, 50 years later, I found myself taking a selfie next to his statue on the grounds of the shrine. (See photos). |
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Rev. Roman told us that at the turn of the 16th century, about 100 years after Columbus landed in Cuba, three peasants went out on the waters of Nipe Bay to collect salt, and that they were caught in a three-day storm that almost sank their small boat.
It was the Virgin of Charity who, Cubans believe, calmed the seas and guided the peasants to safety. According Roman, "the men prayed that they would be saved, and when the storm left, a small wooden statue of Mary came floating up to the boat. Carved on the statue's base was a message - 'I am the Virgin of Charity.'" |
Los Tres Juanes
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They were two Indian brothers, Juan and Rodrigo de Hoyos, and an Afro-Cuban, Juan Moreno, and they became known as "Los Tres Juanes" (The Three Juans).
They took the statue back to their village, Barajagua, where it stayed for several years, Father Roman said. Later, the statue was moved to the town of El Cobre, in Cuba's Oriente Province, where a church was built for it on a hilltop. It is still there. |
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In 1916, Pope Benedict XV proclaimed the Virgin of Charity as Cuba's official patroness. But Cubans have been making pilgrimages to her since she was found. In fact, since 1973, they have been making pilgrimages to her two landmark homes.
The statuette at the shrine in Miami is a replica of the original in El Cobre. It was smuggled out of Cuba in 1962, symbolically showing Cubans that La Virgen is also in exile. From 1966 to 1973, Cuban Catholics raised $420,000 to build the Biscayne Bay shrine, mostly from very small donations from passionately devoted Cubans, including my parents. The significance of that collective effort was perhaps best illustrated by Benito Alonso, my own godfather and journalism mentor who was the religion editor of the weekly newspaper “Patria” at that time. "It's amazing to see how the Cuban people can work together for a religious cause," he said. "Here we see people sending donations that they can’t afford.” |
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At the inauguration ceremony, worshipers gazed at the cone-shaped shrine in awe of what they had achieved. There was faith and pride written on their faces. Many of them carried a statuette of La Virgen in one hand and a Cuban flag in the other.
The people in the crowd told us that they were overwhelmed with emotions, feeling goosebumps, unable to hold back tears. "The Virgin has always given me what I have asked for," they told us. Following the outdoor inauguration and Mass, singers and dancers in brightly colored costumes performed Cuban folk music, as thousands of worshipers streamed through the shrine to pay respects to La Virgen. And well into the night, dozens of priests gave out communion hosts to those who were unable to push through the crowds during the Mass. |
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Chuck and I had a very demanding assignment that day, and we enjoyed every second of it!
Shortly after we wrote that story, we left Miami following different career paths, but kept in touch with each other. After a successful career in TV News, Chuck is now an accomplished author. Yet, La Virgen had such a profound impact on him that when he wrote his first novel, “Eye of the Storm,” he created the fictional character of an 11-year-old boy who keeps pestering his mother to tell him the story of La Virgencita and Los Tres Juanes. In 2017, Chuck and his brother took their late father back to Cuba, and together they also made a pilgrimage to El Cobre. And now, more then 50 years later, for spiritual, sentimental and patriotic reasons, Chuck and I still feel that for us, writing that newspaper story was a life-changing experience. |
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I chatted with Chuck electronically recently. He says the story had such an impact on him that he can still recite the first sentence, describing an elderly woman who attended the inauguration: “Huddled in a wheelchair like a delicate sparrow, Lucia Rad clutched a tiny Cuban flag in trembling wrinkled fingers.”
And when I think of what La Virgen did for Chuck almost two years ago, Ave Maria! Chuck is doing great after a heart transplant!!! "You know, I’ve prayed to her so many times during my heart ordeals," Chuck told me, "before and after the transplant." When I told him I was writing this article, he sent me photo of himself with "La Virgen" in his Manhattan apartment. "Wow," he wrote. "We are both still affected by La Virgencita after all these years!!!" He is right. At my home, the one and only prominent painting in my living room is a replica of a 1952 masterpiece by Cuban artist Manuel Mesa depicting a party where people are dancing in celebration of the Sept. 8 Feast of Our Lady of Charity. It's called "Un toque de violin para la virgen (A playing of violin for the virgin)," and I never get tired of looking at it! |
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I also have a statuette of La Virgen with Los Tres Juanes in my living room, just as my parents did for my entire life. Of course, the image of La Virgen is on the tombstones of my parents and by brother!
Shortly after our trip to El Cobre, when we came to Miami on April 7, 1962, although we were poor refugees, my parents bought me a thin gold chain with a small medal of La Virgen. I still wear in on my chest. When I tell people that she is always with me, I mean it! |
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