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2001 Cuba Journal
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2001 Cuba Journal
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13 July 2002
| The following
pages are excerpts from a daily journal I kept during two
weeks of cave art and museum research in Cuba. Thanks to
the Treasury Department permission for travel to Cuba
which our university enjoys I was able to arrange my
research and all necessary flights and permits. My
primary contact in Cuba, Racso Fernández Ortega, Chief
Archaeologist for the Centro de Patrimonio Cultural, La
Habana, was extremely helpfull in making necessary
arrangements for my hotel and itinerary. This was my
second visit to the island, and with Racso's assistance I
was able to visit fourteen caves, some not accessible
without official authorization. We went to sites in three
provinces (La Habana, Matanzas, and Camagüey) logging a
total of over 2,700 kilometers on my rented jeep. Racso
proved to be not only an excellent guide and companion,
but as one of the primary rock art researchers on the
island he is an excellent source for the most up-to-date
information on the theories of interpreting the rock art,
the history of conservation and restoration, and current
status of scholarship.
This journal is
not a scholarly publication by any means. The more
"scholarly" observations (speculations) will be
reserved for reviewed publications. I will be glad to
answer any questions I can; just email me. I also have a page of
information on the XII Encuentro de
Filósofos y Científicos Sociales Cubanos y
Norteamericanos (12th Conference of Cuban and North
American Philosophers and Social Scientists), 19-23 June, 2000,
Havana, Cuba.
I would like to stress that my research is only a small part of a long history of cave art research in Cuba. We all owe a sincere debt of gratitude to the late Antonio Núñez Jiménez, who tirelessly devoted his life to cave research and conservation. In the photograph below, Núñez (right) and Fidel Castro Ruz in Cueva del Ciclón, Sierra de Ancón, Pinar del Rio, 1959 (from Medio Siglo Explorando a Cuba: Historia documentada de la Sociedad Espeleológica de Cuba, La Habana 1989).
Continue with the 2001 Cuba Journal... |
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Department of Art History, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond,
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