ARTICLE
ANGERONA: THE CUBAN DREAM OF TWO CULTURES
BY: JULIO A. LARRAMENDI
After riding for an hour, the two men stopped. While one of them showed the huge land for sale, the other, not very skilled in the art of riding, settled himself on the back of the beast. Once recovered, Cornelio Souchay began to enjoy the green meadow dotted with gentle hills, and as if in a revelation, he imagined every space of what would be his dream come true: Angerona, the most beautiful coffee plantation in Cuba.
It was 1813 and an extraordinary adventure was beginning for Lieutenant Colonel Cornelio Souchay Escher. Born on October 21, 1784 in the German city of Hanau, into a wealthy family of French Huguenots who emigrated to Germany at the end of the 17th century, he arrived in Cuba in 1807, in search of fortune, like most emigrants. , and never returned to Europe. His knowledge of English and Spanish and his skills as a merchant allowed him to progress rapidly in Havana and, in a few years, accumulate a solid fortune.
In the capital he met young Úrsula Lambert, a free-born black Haitian who emigrated to Cuba fleeing the Saint-Domingue revolution. Intelligent and hardworking, she Úrsula had prospered in her small business.
The meeting of the two races and cultures was explosive. Each found in the other the passion of the body and the spiritual impulse to realize their aspirations. It was she who suggested investing in coffee, a drink that had already been definitively installed in European and American salons. She also gave the name to the coffee plantation: Angerona, the Roman goddess of silence and fertility. The silence that would preside over their relationships and the fertility necessary to produce the red grain in abundance.
Located at kilometer 5 of the highway from Artemisa to Cayajabos, Angerona in a few years became the most splendid and productive coffee plantation in Cuba. With 450 slaves, a huge figure for a single plantation, a quarter of a century after it was founded it encompassed 40 caballerias with more than 625,000 coffee trees, hundreds of fruit trees and precious woods, vegetables, viands and a small cane plantation with its sugar mill.
Ursula's arrival in Angerona provided the essential organization and imposed on her German, by dint of "female persuasion," a less inhumane treatment of slaves and better living conditions. She was in charge of training the young slaves in housework, she ran a small shop where you could buy a variety of basic necessities, the infirmary and newborn children.
Instead of the always gloomy barrack, the slaves from the coffee plantation lived in individual huts made of stones, boards and guano, in a walled space, with a watchtower and a large lattice gate as the only access, which was opened only twice a day: at dawn to go to work and at dusk, to return from work.
Many famous visitors would come to the coffee plantation: José Antonio Saco, José de la Luz y Caballero, the Spaniard Jacinto Salas y Quiroga; the parish priest Abiel Abbot described in a beautiful letter the benefits of the place, and the young Cirilo Villaverde, shortly after publishing the first part of Cecilia Valdés, assured: «Everything in that farm breathed foreign air. The order of the factories, their arrangement, the machines, the tools to save arms […] the furniture, the prison, the hospital, the gardens, everything is clearly saying that the taste, perseverance and ingenuity of the foreigner have caught on there. , from the brainy German, in short.
Cornelio died in Havana on June 12, 1837 and was buried in the coffee plantation cemetery. In his will, he left the faithful and discreet lover an allowance in annual installments that he never fully collected. Haitian Úrsula died in Havana in 1860, at the age of 70.
For a long time of Angerona only the ruins remain, witnesses of an extraordinary and lost wealth. And the legends of the torrid and hidden love of Cornelio and Úrsula.
For several years, the Cabinet of Archeology of the Office of the Historian of Havana, together with students from Canadian universities and local archaeologists, have been conducting excavation campaigns in Angerona.
Numerous pieces have been found around the main house, the slave barracks and the old cemetery.
Declared a National Monument in 1981, Angerona requires a significant investment and prolonged restoration work to restore its former splendor and become a safe and attractive visit for Cubans and foreigners on their way through Artemisa.
It was 1813 and an extraordinary adventure was beginning for Lieutenant Colonel Cornelio Souchay Escher. Born on October 21, 1784 in the German city of Hanau, into a wealthy family of French Huguenots who emigrated to Germany at the end of the 17th century, he arrived in Cuba in 1807, in search of fortune, like most emigrants. , and never returned to Europe. His knowledge of English and Spanish and his skills as a merchant allowed him to progress rapidly in Havana and, in a few years, accumulate a solid fortune.
In the capital he met young Úrsula Lambert, a free-born black Haitian who emigrated to Cuba fleeing the Saint-Domingue revolution. Intelligent and hardworking, she Úrsula had prospered in her small business.
The meeting of the two races and cultures was explosive. Each found in the other the passion of the body and the spiritual impulse to realize their aspirations. It was she who suggested investing in coffee, a drink that had already been definitively installed in European and American salons. She also gave the name to the coffee plantation: Angerona, the Roman goddess of silence and fertility. The silence that would preside over their relationships and the fertility necessary to produce the red grain in abundance.
Located at kilometer 5 of the highway from Artemisa to Cayajabos, Angerona in a few years became the most splendid and productive coffee plantation in Cuba. With 450 slaves, a huge figure for a single plantation, a quarter of a century after it was founded it encompassed 40 caballerias with more than 625,000 coffee trees, hundreds of fruit trees and precious woods, vegetables, viands and a small cane plantation with its sugar mill.
Ursula's arrival in Angerona provided the essential organization and imposed on her German, by dint of "female persuasion," a less inhumane treatment of slaves and better living conditions. She was in charge of training the young slaves in housework, she ran a small shop where you could buy a variety of basic necessities, the infirmary and newborn children.
Instead of the always gloomy barrack, the slaves from the coffee plantation lived in individual huts made of stones, boards and guano, in a walled space, with a watchtower and a large lattice gate as the only access, which was opened only twice a day: at dawn to go to work and at dusk, to return from work.
Many famous visitors would come to the coffee plantation: José Antonio Saco, José de la Luz y Caballero, the Spaniard Jacinto Salas y Quiroga; the parish priest Abiel Abbot described in a beautiful letter the benefits of the place, and the young Cirilo Villaverde, shortly after publishing the first part of Cecilia Valdés, assured: «Everything in that farm breathed foreign air. The order of the factories, their arrangement, the machines, the tools to save arms […] the furniture, the prison, the hospital, the gardens, everything is clearly saying that the taste, perseverance and ingenuity of the foreigner have caught on there. , from the brainy German, in short.
Cornelio died in Havana on June 12, 1837 and was buried in the coffee plantation cemetery. In his will, he left the faithful and discreet lover an allowance in annual installments that he never fully collected. Haitian Úrsula died in Havana in 1860, at the age of 70.
For a long time of Angerona only the ruins remain, witnesses of an extraordinary and lost wealth. And the legends of the torrid and hidden love of Cornelio and Úrsula.
For several years, the Cabinet of Archeology of the Office of the Historian of Havana, together with students from Canadian universities and local archaeologists, have been conducting excavation campaigns in Angerona.
Numerous pieces have been found around the main house, the slave barracks and the old cemetery.
Declared a National Monument in 1981, Angerona requires a significant investment and prolonged restoration work to restore its former splendor and become a safe and attractive visit for Cubans and foreigners on their way through Artemisa.
