El Cobre. Santiago de Cuba
The Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Cobre, high on a hill 20km northwest of Santiago de Cuba on the old road to Bayamo, is Cuba's most sacred pilgrimage site and shrine of the nation's patron saint: La Virgen de la Caridad (Our Lady of Charity), or Cachita, as she is also known.
Many have offered gifts and keepsakes to the Virgin of El Cobre - some of them famous. The most celebrated donor was Ernest Hemingway, who elected to leave the 23-karat gold medal he won for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 to the 'Cuban people'.
Rather than hand it over to the Batista regime, Hemingway donated the medal to the Catholic Church, who subsequently placed it in sanctuario. The medal was stolen temporarily in the 1980s but, despite being retrieved a few days later, it has since been kept locked away from public view .
In 1957 Lina Ruz left a small guerilla figurine at the feet of the Virgin to pray for the safety of her two sons, Fidel and Raul Castro, who were then fighting in the Sierra Maestra. Fate - or was it the spirit of El Cobre? - shone brightly. Both sons are now into their 80s and still going!
More recently, dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez visited the Virgin and left her Ortega and Gasset journalistic award in the sanctuary where, in her own words, 'the long arm of censor does not enter.'
Lonely Planet
El Cobre. Santiago de Cuba
The Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Cobre, high on a hill 20km northwest of Santiago de Cuba on the old road to Bayamo, is Cuba's most sacred pilgrimage site and shrine of the nation's patron saint: La Virgen de la Caridad (Our Lady of Charity), or Cachita, as she is also known.
Many have offered gifts and keepsakes to the Virgin of El Cobre - some of them famous. The most celebrated donor was Ernest Hemingway, who elected to leave the 23-karat gold medal he won for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 to the 'Cuban people'.
Rather than hand it over to the Batista regime, Hemingway donated the medal to the Catholic Church, who subsequently placed it in sanctuario. The medal was stolen temporarily in the 1980s but, despite being retrieved a few days later, it has since been kept locked away from public view .
In 1957 Lina Ruz left a small guerilla figurine at the feet of the Virgin to pray for the safety of her two sons, Fidel and Raul Castro, who were then fighting in the Sierra Maestra. Fate - or was it the spirit of El Cobre? - shone brightly. Both sons are now into their 80s and still going!
More recently, dissident Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez visited the Virgin and left her Ortega and Gasset journalistic award in the sanctuary where, in her own words, 'the long arm of censor does not enter.'
Lonely Planet