Who is Virgin of Cobre?

Answer 1

It was Virgin Mary.

Legend has it that a man took a piece of cloth into the desert with his camel. He turned and saw Mary (Cobre), who put her face on his cloth.

Maceo, a hero of Cuba's wars of independence against Spain, is said to have paid tribute to the Virgin of Cobre before he left to take up the fight. Sometimes she is called the Virgin of the Mambises after the name of the 19th century independence fighters and is very much a symbol of Cuban nationalism.

According to the most popular history of the Virgin of Cobre, three boatmen discovered a floating wooden statue of the Virgin in 1606 in the Bay of Nipe in northeastern Cuba and brought it to El Cobre, a copper mining town. The present sanctuary was built in 1927.

The Virgin of Cobre is depicted as mulatto, making her attractive across Cuba's multihued racial spectrum. She also has an appeal beyond pure Catholicism as the Santeria deity Oshun, who is a maternal, sensual figure, a mistress of love, femininity and water.

Santeria, a religion of African origin, came to Cuba with the slaves who were brought there under Spanish colonialism. A process of mingling, "syncretism,'' has produced parallels between Santeria divinities or saints and the Catholic saints.

Whether inspired by revolutionary or Catholic faith, or neither, many Cubans have a sentimental attachment to the Virgin of Cobre. Historian Olga Portuondo wrote that after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution crowds surged to the shrine to give thanks for the end of Fulgencio Bastista's Dictatorship.

In her history of the Virgin of Cobre, Portuondo briefly sums up what followed: "Social tensions prompted many faithful to leave the Catholic Church. With the revolution, the people looked for the conquest of heaven on Earth.''