Santa Ifigenia Cemetery, located in the city of Santiago de Cuba, capital of the province of the same name, houses the remains of the Cuban national hero, José Martí, and since December 3, 2016, the ashes of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz.
This cemetery, inaugurated in February 1868, was the third officially used cemetery in Cuba, after the Espada Cemetery and the Colón Cemetery, which is why a good part of the past and present history of this Caribbean city is found in the stillness and silence of its more than eight thousand tombs and other mournful constructions.
The Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in the city of Santiago de Cuba is named after an Ethiopian virgin baptized by St. Matthew the Apostle. The site has been a National Monument since 1979, for the rich historical, architectural and cultural arsenal it treasures. Hence, the concern for preserving and caring for such a jewel of Santiago and national culture is a constant in the work of the Provincial Center for Cultural Heritage and the Office of the City Conservator.
Names of men closely linked to the history of the struggle for the freedom of the Cuban people appear in the records of the necropolis, such as José Martí, José Maceo and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes.
There are also authentic monuments to the memory of illustrious women, among them Mariana Grajales, the mother of the Maceo family; Maria Cabrales, Antonio Maceo’s wife, and Elvira Cape. From recent history are the tombs of Frank País and Josué País, Otto Parellada, Tony Alomá, Pepito Tey and a plethora of young santiagueros killed in clandestine combat against the tyranny of Fulgencio Batista. Today the remains of the internationalist combatants fallen in other lands rest there.
The Santa Ifigenia Cemetery not only keeps history, but also monumentality and magnificence, in true works of art made of granite, marble and other components that make it a mandatory place of reference for the visitor.
In the cemetery is the José Martí Mausoleum dedicated to the National Hero of Cuba, and apostle of the independence of Cuba José Martí, where his ashes rest on a handful of earth from each country of America.
Inaugurated on June 30, 1951, with its 24 meters high, it dominates the entire necropolis and is its symbol par excellence.
Its Romanesque architecture, sober and elegant, is arranged in such a way that the sun’s rays filter through the skylight into the crypt.
The Remains of Fidel Castro Ruz
On December 3, 2016, after the transfer of the remains of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, from Havana to the East of the country, an occasion in which he was bid farewell to the passing of the funeral procession by all the people of Cuba, his remains arrived in the city of Santiago de Cuba, after reediting in reverse the itinerary of the Caravan of Freedom in January 1959.
After the tour through emblematic sites of the city and the massive popular concentration on the night of December 3 at the General Antonio Maceo Main Square, in the morning hours of December 4, the ashes of the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution were deposited in the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery,
National Monument, in the final resting place.
The burial ceremony was solemn and private, with the attendance of specially invited personalities. While the ashes were being buried, 21 salvos were fired in Havana in tribute to the historic leader of the Revolution.
he ashes were placed near the mausoleum of the National Hero José Martí; of his comrades of struggle in the Moncada, the Granma and the Rebel Army; of the clandestinity and the internationalist missions, a few steps away from the tombs of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Father of the Homeland, and of the legendary Mariana Grajales, mother of the Maceos and close to the pantheon with the remains of the young revolutionary, Frank País García.
Road of the Fathers of the Homeland
On October 10, 2017, the remains of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Father of the Homeland, and those of Mariana Grajales, Mother of the Homeland, were interred, with the aim of placing them in the central patrimonial area of the cemetery, where the National Apostle of Cuba, José Martí, was already located, and where the ashes of the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, were later placed. Since then, the Cuban people and foreign visitors pay tribute to him in a more expeditious way.
Since October 10, the initiators of the libertarian deeds have been together, in what was called The Path of the Fathers of the Homeland or the advanced line of Céspedes, Mariana, Martí and Fidel.
A patrimonial front of high esteem was opened to the visitor, when they found themselves ready to exalt the history of Mariana and Céspedes (initiator of the struggles in 1868) next to the National Hero and continuator in 1895, and immediately after the Commander in Chief, initiator of the Cuban Revolution in 1953.
The pantheons of Céspedes and Mariana were moved intact from the site where they were located in the cemetery itself, while a 4.60 meter bronze sculpture of Mariana, the work of the renowned sculptor Alberto Lescay Merencio, was added to the group. The sculpture was placed next to the tomb of Mariana Grajales, coinciding with the burial ceremony of the remains of the heroine.
Cast in bronze from artillery cannon shells of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the sculpture is located on top of a roundel with earth brought especially from the Majaguabo farm, in the San Luis municipality of Santiago, where the Maceo-Grajales family grew up, and is surrounded by a path of stones from the town of Palmarito de Cauto, where Antonio and his brothers used to go.
The work tries to harmonize by way of contrast with nearby monuments such as that of the Father of the Homeland, and becomes a synergic symbiosis with Martí, the martyrs and heroes of the Moncada, the internationalists and Fidel.
A monument was dedicated to the Father of the Homeland, in which Cuba is represented holding out a laurel branch.