MADRID, Spain.- In 1953, on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Jose Marti, Various activities were organized in Cuba to celebrate that historic date. It was in this context that the young teacher Emérita Segredo Carreño, a member of the Association of Former Students of the Martí Seminary, proposed placing a bust of Martí in the highest place in Cuba: Pico Turquino, with its 1,974 meters above sea level. , in the province of Santiago de Cuba. The idea of placing a sculpture of the National Hero on that cusp was received with enthusiasm.
Gonzalo de Quesada y Miranda, director of the Fragua Martiana and president of the Association, supported the initiative. He personally contacted the sculptor Jilma Madera and asked her to make a bust identical to the one that had been inaugurated in that institution on January 28, 1952, also by her. The realization of the project received technical cooperation from the National Institute of Archeology (INA) and from Dr. Manuel Sánchez Silveira, INA delegate in the East and father of Celia Sánchez Manduley. The respected doctor was in charge of moving the bust to the Sierra Maestra and other logistical details concerning its location.
May 17, 1953 jilma wood and other members of the Martí group traveled by bus to Santiago de Cuba, where they arrived the following day. Very early on the morning of May 19, the anniversary of Martí’s death in Dos Ríos, they paid tribute to him with an honor guard at the Mausoleum that houses his remains in the Santa Ifigenia cemetery. That same afternoon they left the bay of Santiago in a schooner and arrived at the town of Ocujal del Turquino under a heavy downpour.
On the morning of the 20th, they began the dangerous ascent to Altos de Babiney, located at an altitude of 1,127.7 meters. They continued to Altos de Caldero, at an altitude of 1,209 meters, and then reached Cueva del Aura, which the peasants called “Campamento Martí”, located at more than 1,400 meters above sea level. There they spent the night and at dawn they continued ascending.
Using a stretcher, through the dense undergrowth of the place, twelve men transferred the cement, water and sculpture, which weighed 163 pounds, to the Turquino. Jilma Madera, Dr. Manuel Sánchez, her daughter Celia and the sisters Emérita and Cila Segrero reached the summit at mid-morning, under a sun that shone without getting too hot.
There, at the highest point in Cuba, the two-meter base added to the monument was finished and the tarja that immortalized this phrase by José Martí was placed: “Few, like the mountains, are the men who know how to look from them, and they feel deeply of the nation, or of humanity”.
At noon on May 21, 1953, with floral offerings sent by the Marti groups from Santiago de Cuba and the flag solemnly hoisted on a branch, the bust of the most universal of Cubans was unveiled.
