It is not known for sure when it was introduced the sparrow in Cuba . Although the house sparrow (Passer domesticus ) is native to Eurasia and North Africa, its presence on the island of Cuba has already been documented in the Physical-Natural Repertoire of the Island of Cuba published 1865, a work resulting from 25 years of field observations by the Spanish-German zoologist and naturalist Juan Cristóbal Gundlach. Gundlach writes:«species introduced and acclimatized on the island of Cuba and already observed breeding in the wild, […] European sparrow today so abundant in Havana and its surroundings […] harmful to fruit trees and crops; can serve as a tasty dish».
It is also not known who or how the sparrow was introduced to Cuba. A story surely born from the popular imagination tells that a Catalan living on the island, due to his ornithological hobby or perhaps simply longing, took several cages with gurriatos or sparrow babies to Cuba. When disembarking in the port of Havana, they demanded at customs to pay the tariffs or entry rights. Refusing to pay them, he opened the cages and released all the birds. It does not seem by chance that the story is identical to the one explained to justify the arrival of the sparrow in Argentina. Although, in the Argentine case, the protagonist of the release of the birds in the port of Buenos Aires has allegedly identified himself with the brewer Emilio Bieckert. The businessman brought, from his native Alsace, some sparrow cages along with the necessary machinery to set up a brewery and by also refusing to pay the import taxes, he freed the sparrows. Be that as it may, the truth is that the sparrow arrived in Cuba in the 19th century and thanks to its great prolific power, in a few years, it colonized the main cities of the island.
“Sparrows” and “birdies”
What is certain is that the nickname «sparrows» for the peninsulars (the analogy between the small bird and the peninsulars seems obvious, since both were recently arrived from the peninsula) and the nickname of «bijiritas» for the islanders (a bird smaller in size and more skittish than the sparrow, which migrates to Florida in summer fleeing the Cuban heat and returns to the island in winter), they were the most popular, and probably also the most harmless of those who used , to attack each other, the two opposing sides during the Ten Years' War of 1868 . Santiago Ramón y Cajal mentions both nicknames in his autobiography Memories of my life , where he evokes his participation in the Cuban war:«Undoubtedly alluding to the laziness and delicacy of this little bird, our soldiers designated vigiritas (sic) to the Creoles, and particularly to the mambises or insurrectionists; on the other hand, we peninsular people were called sparrows and patones».
On January 9, 1869, General Domingo Dulce y Garay , governor and captain general of the island of Cuba, decreed the freedom of the press . For the first time in history, citizens of the province of Cuba could publish freely without censorship or any other prior requirement, with the exception of two matters that were excluded from the new law:the Catholic religion and slavery. It was, perhaps, the most important measure of the conciliatory political and administrative reforms that were adopted, under the mandate of General Dulce, to try to approach the insurgent side and be able to pacify the island. Although the freedom of the press was only in force for thirty-three days, from the day of its approval, on January 9, until its repeal, on February 11, 101 different newspapers appeared. Two of the first newspapers to be announced were El Gorrión (which defined itself as "an industrious, liberal and funny newspaper:it will come out whenever it wants") and Las Bijiritas (which was defined as "break and crack newspaper that will come out now, then and later"). Both were short-lived. The Sparrow was published three times and Las Bijiritas a few more, but since both publications came out of the same press at different times of the same day, with the same size, typeface and writing style, it was suspected that it was the same pen that wrote the two newspapers. A clever publisher had discovered a way to do business using the satirical press and taking advantage of the division of society due to the war.
And although the appellation «sparrow» or «sparrows», in the mouth of the insurgents, was intended to offend, the peninsulars gladly accepted the label. It soon became a nickname that, especially, the Volunteer Corps of the Island of Cuba they felt proud, giving rise to an unusual event during Holy Week in 1869.
Funeral honors to the sparrow
On the afternoon of Holy Thursday, March 25, 1869, a volunteer of the 7th Battalion of the Company of Riflemen, while on guard duty, found a dead sparrow under the laurels of the Plaza de Armas in Havana . Historical and emblematic square of the Cuban capital, place where exactly 350 years before the city was founded in its current location [1]. The volunteer, considering the sparrow as one of his own, took the bird's corpse to the Guard Corps of the Castillo de la Real Fuerza. There, the battalion that was on guard shrouded and embalmed the deceased and built a small altar to deposit him. Around the altar the different bodies of volunteers began to pay funeral honors to the little bird. Corporals and sergeants placed him on a litter and paraded him around the barracks, treating the deceased as if he were a fallen soldier. Thus, what had started as a simple joke, the result of the boredom of a military guard, became a patriotic issue that was soon echoed throughout the island.
There were those who understood that this first moment of the homage to the sparrow was a claim by the volunteers to attack General Domingo Dulce. They accused him of being too conciliatory and soft in his policies to combat the insurrection on the island. Barely two months later, volunteers surrounded Dulce at the Palacio de los Capitanes Generales and forced her to resign.
After the story of the bird's death was published in the press, men and women from all over the city came to the fortress to pray and light candles in his memory. The volunteer forces made honor guards for the deceased comrade . The porticoes of the barracks were decorated with weapons and flags. Invitations were sent to the main authorities and figures of public life to visit the burning chapel of the sparrow. On Holy Saturday, the Marchioness of Castell-Florite, wife of General Dulce, attended the meeting, who brought two bouquets of flowers, and the wife of the Governor of Havana, Dionisio López Roberts, who brought a crown of flowers, while their companions They left money to build a monument to him. The Marquis of Aguas Claras sent a crown with a dedication that read:"From a bijirita who has never seen sparrows with bad eyes."
At the feet of the deceased improvised sonnets of forced feet, among other poets, the Catalan Francisco Camprodón and the Sevillian Gabriel Estrella, considered «enlightened poets and proven sparrows» [2].
There was such a large number of people at the wake that it was necessary to close the gate of the Castillo de la Fuerza to prevent the entry of more visitors. The press of the time picked up the news highlighting that the door had to be opened to a girl (daughter of the governor of Havana) who, crying, shouted "let her see her countryman".
On Easter Sunday, the Battalion of Light Volunteers of Havana, seeing that the large number of people did not stop, placed the sparrow with its flowers and crowns in the portico of the barracks and began to charge admission . At one real for each visitor, they raised more than 300 pesos that went to a charity home.
The event also had repercussions in the entertainment world. Luisa Martinez Married (who would come to be considered by critics as one of the best Spanish-speaking theater actresses of the 19th century) she participated, at the age of 9, in a play entitled El gorrión written by her father. It was performed ten nights in a row and, thanks to its success, it continued for a longer time on the bill of the Variety-Albisú theater in the Cuban capital.
After Easter, the volunteers of the city of Matanzas sent a telegram requesting the remains of the «volunteer sparrow» to pay him, there too, the last honors . Likewise, the body of the sparrow traveled to the cities of Guanabacoa, Cárdenas, Puerto Príncipe and Santiago de Cuba to celebrate the funeral. In Cárdenas he was received at the railway station by the Chapelgorris Volunteer Corps from Guamuta. The Basque volunteers were famous because, two months earlier, they had stood out in the battle that managed to put down the Jagüey insurrection, the victory being crucial to prevent the spread of the war to the western side of the island. The funeral procession walked through the main streets of the city, and after the celebration of a field mass, the sparrow was transferred to the halls of the Spanish Casino. There he was exposed in a burning chapel with an honor guard in which the city's volunteers took turns.
The nameless grave of the sparrow
After all the journey around the island, back to Havana, the sparrow was buried in the Colon Cemetery, today declared a national monument of Cuba. His tomb, which belonged to the newspaper La Voz de Cuba , is preserved today without any inscription, located in the northeast sector of the necropolis.
The figure of the sparrow, as a representation of Spain and of the Spanish, subsequently originated several releases of sparrows in cities throughout the island. Among them, the one carried out by the volunteers from Santiago de Cuba in December of that same year and the one carried out later in Tunas are documented, which undoubtedly helped the expansion and success of the species throughout the island.
The symbol of the sparrow was forever linked in Cuba with the volunteers , and by extension, with all Spaniards born in Europe. But if we analyze how the subsequent historical events evolved:the War of 1895, the explosion of the battleship Maine and the war against the United States, we now understand that the true enemy of the sparrows was not the bijiritas, the enemy that ended up devouring the ill-fated sparrow was the American bald eagle.
Bibliography
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- Castellanos, G. (1934). Historical panorama, Cuban chronology essay from 1492 to 1933 . Ucar, García y Cía, Havana.
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- Roig de Leuchsenring, E. (1960) The Catholic Church against the independence of Cuba . Model Printer Workshops, Havana.
- Marius, (February 11, 1869). "private correspondence" Mahon Diary .
- Miramamolin. (April 4, 1869). "Deep. To the late sparrow. Obituary". The Moor Muza, pp. 1-5.
- Entertaining section. (April 24, 1869). The impartial , p. 3.
- Rodríguez Parets, B. (June 20, 1927). «About sparrows». The Cantabrian , p. 1.
- Català, R.A. (December 2, 1932). "From Distant Yesterday". Navy Journal, p. 18.
- Garcia Torres, H. (March 21, 2021). "A sparrow in the graveyard". CubaDebate .
Notes
[1] In 1519 the foundation of Havana takes place in the place that the Plaza de Armas occupies today. According to tradition, it was chosen to solemnize the event on November 16, the feast of San Cristóbal, patron saint of Havana. And the same tradition tells that the act consisted of the celebration of a mass at the foot of a corpulent ceiba tree and the delivery of charters and privileges to the council.
[2] Francisco Camprodón Safont and Gabriel Estrella Mantilla had studied law and in 1868 both were in Cuba working. Camprodón was assigned to the Treasury Administration and Estrella as Magistrate in the Royal Court of Havana.