Madrid/Desperate to export their marble, the producers of the island of youth face serious difficulties. Year after year, grandiloquent reports are made about the “workers’ effort” and “the commitment of producing companies.” However, with an obsolete machinery, the exodus of specialized labor and the clumsiness of the authorities to transfer production to Havana, it is very difficult to achieve the dream of taking some dollars to the so -called “gray gold”.
Between 400 and 500 tons of marble are stagnant between the factory and the port. This situation delays the works and weakens the reputation of the Pinera company. Last July, the journalist Dagoberto Consuegra made A report for Tecentro Island where he denounced the abandonment of the material in the port of Nueva Gerona. Since May, the lot expected to be transferred to the capital, without success. And this Monday, the local radio station Radio Caribe He has affirmed That everything remains exactly the same.
In the report for Islands, the director of the Mármoles Isla business unit lamented the situation: “We lose credibility with the client. He feels that he accepted the invoice, which he paid, and does not receive the merchandise. I think that is not good for the prestige of the company or for the effort of the workers,” he said.
“We lose credibility with the client. He feels that he accepted the invoice, which he paid, and does not receive the merchandise. I think that is not good for the prestige of the company or for the effort of the workers”
And the complaint on Radio Caribe adds that, with the money obtained, they planned to renew a technology 40 years old, buy a new loom and a polisher, as well as improve the salary of their workers. “The island of Youth creates a badly precedent,” said the official, critical tone, “how to manage at the country level that this entity can become an export pole, with a first client like Russia, if today does not come out of its production of the Pinero port.”
The gray hills of the island of Youth have kept a geological treasure that has given monuments such as the Tunnel of Havana, the José Martí civic square – current Plaza de la Revolution – or buildings in Varadero. It was discovered in 1834 by a Frenchman surnamed Chateaux in the Sierra de Horse, when he was looking for gold without imagining the stone legacy he would find.
The first commercial exploitation attempts date from 1845, with the arrival of the first steam machines to the riverbank of the Strong Arroyo. In the following decades, marble was integrated into the local landscape – in parks, sculptures, trails, and constructions – and became a symbol of identity and permanence. Its climate resistance and mirror polishing capacity make it especially valuable as construction and art material.
During the eighties the local industry was promoted with the opening of the combined Nelson Marrero, marking a leap in the structured production of the resource. It was also estimated in 2020 that the reserves of the Siboney Gray Marble exceed 348,000 cubic meters and those of the pearl another 210,000, sufficient for decades of exploitation.
But the excesses in their decorative use in cemeteries and state institutions were created to the product very bad reputation, becoming “funeral marble.” In 2011, A newspaper report Rebel youth He tried to blame the masons of that black legend. “The marble of the island of youth is gray (pearl or siboney) many no longer like it because they see it in hospitals, the police, cemeteries … but the problem is not of the stone, but of the placement. The mason usually puts the slabs as a mason and does not look at the work as an artist,” said the official medium.
But the excesses in their decorative use in cemeteries and state institutions were created to the product very bad reputation, becoming “funeral marble”
The new rich of the current Cuba prefer to avoid it. That is why it is not surprising that, in the first half of this year, They will import materials From the US worth $ 23,521, including marble. The arrival in the country of the porcelain, which mimics any material, can be acquired in large slabs, is more manageable and does not weigh so much, it has also been a hard blow to the local marble.
In 2020, the EUB of Isla de la Juventud, under the Roca Real brand, sent a batch of abujaradas slabs for evaluation. The national market was not in the sights, but the goal of exporting to the Caribbean, Europe and North America. Commercial intentions to Russia and Slovakia also emerged.
A palpable advance occurred in 2021, when it made its first export to Trinidad and Tobago, with the willingness to grow in 2022. However, reality breaks in pieces the plans of the producers. “What are mounted or not in the pin should rethink and gradually create conditions for the marble crossing of the Pinero port to Batabanó,” denounced the local station. Until the logistics, bureaucratic and technological ballast is not overcome, export will continue to be a promise, trapped in blocks that do not reach the sea.
