Crab Monument (terrestrial)

Sculpture created by Alberto Muñiz Morales representing a huge crab. Symbol of the city Cárdenas, in Matanzas, for the abundance of these animals in the area.

History

The crabs must have saluted the caravels of Sebastián de Ocampo when, bojeando to the Island of Cuba by orders of the advanced Diego Velázquez, entered and delimited the bay of Siguapa or Siguagua (Bahía de Cárdenas). They must also have interposed their fight against the first lumberjacks who extracted the wood from the area, as well as those who set up the dry docks for the repair of their boats.

Since its foundation, product of the recovery of the marshes and mangroves, the first neighborhoods of the city of Cárdenas have always had the invasion of crabs in their patios and streets. It is perhaps the revenge of nature for the human use of the habitat of native crustaceans. For more than 180 years, the fight for the survival of crustaceans has been against kitchen boilers, the wheels of carts, cars and bogies (those of cars today), until it was decided to use it as another symbol. from the city.

 

Presence in the colony

Of the first incidents in the foundation of the city of San Juan de Dios and Cárdenas on March 8, 1828, related to crabs, there are not many data, except for a fine statement from 1848, collected by Carlos Hellberg in his "Statistical History de Cárdenas - 1893 ”.

The incest side was issued by the lieutenant governor, Don Francisco Javier Quintayros, for which a fine of five pesos had to be paid for each dead crab found in the streets. And soon he had to suspend him for knowing his mistake, since he innocently punished several neighbors who, by chance, died in the vicinity of his house one of those animals.

Certainly the side had been justified by the pestilence due to the immense quantity of crabs that infested the population, whose smell flooded the local atmosphere. Back then, the presence of crabs in the city was considered a plague. During the first days of the chusco bando, the population was exempted from killing the crabs, but this did not reduce the mortality and the consequent pestilence of the crabs.

With the side suspended, the town gave itself up with a real frenzy to the slaughter of crabs and on the first day of the suspension two carts filled with the dead crabs had to be picked up. These were burned near the cemetery at that time (supposedly the first in the city). This burning was considered a celebration for all the neighbors, since a multitude of colors came out of the flames that arose from this combustion with the bursts of the crabs that burst. These were fireworks of a new genre, which the residents witnessed together with the incentive of the suspension of the wrongly dictated side.

Pseudo republic and today

Although it is indisputable that the enchilados came with the conquerors, in the specific case of the crabs they have been used in novelistic references. This is the case of the historical novel Doña Guiomar del Mar, by Emilio Bacardí Moreau, published in Barcelona in 1912. However, although there are several culinary recipes with this animal (depending on the species), Cardenseans prefer to say that there is no no other type of enchilado like theirs.

As recorded in the notes of the journalist and customs man of the city, now deceased, Roberto Bueno Castan (Criers Cardenenses, unpublished), other types of crabs (rather the violinist of the coast) were offered in distant times with a proclamation where they changed sayings button crabs for clothes.

Currently, hunting, sale and consumption of the crab is maintained, with its differences between the mangrove and the palm grove. Foolish food some say, very tasty with the good accompaniment of the "lagers", by the judgment of others. And, according to the older ones, it can only be eaten in the months that do not have ¨bre¨ as the final syllable, (March, May, June, July, August), since in the others they do not have meat.

Building

The idea

Even between the years 89 and 90 of the last century, the desire to identify the city with its symbols spread, so they managed and decided on three: the bicycle, the car and the crab. Rigoberto Segura, then First Secretary of the CM - PCC, contacted Alberto Muñiz Morales to take on the task of initially making and placing the crab sculpture at the entrance to the city, through the area of ​​the 13 de Marzo distribution, on the road to Máximo Gómez. The idea had arisen from the historical connection of the city with said animal.

The project

According to the testimony of Alberto Muñiz Morales himself, as a first step for the project, he located three crabs approximately the same size. The first dissected it to use it as a model of the work, due to the position adopted, in which it took into account the placement of the legs and the grinding wheels. He thought that it would be more artistic and elegant if the larger wheel was completely in the air, in an attitude of defense, but finally decided to place the wheel on the ground, anticipating the hurricane force winds that the sculpture would face in the future.

The second stuffed crab was unarmed in all its bony parts. In total this arthropod is made up of 49 pieces, of which there is only symmetry in two of the mouth, the eyes and the alternate legs.

The third crab remained alive and spent six months at Alberto's house, to observe its movements. This was the stage in which the artist began to draw the drawings for each piece, from which he made a plan and section view.

Once the plans were completed, he went to the study of the form. The sculptor decided to make the sculpture by making it of iron cement, for which he would have to establish the scale, that is, how many times would the bone parts of the crab be, which would have to be made of iron and then join them. But, despite being convinced by then that he would be able to make the sculpture, he did not know where to start making what is called the carapace. He dedicated almost three months of mental work to this piece, thinking that it was the key to the entire work, since this part is what supports the head and the legs come out to support the entire body, so an error in the construction of these would be the failure of the work.

Keep in mind that the crab has eight legs, ending in hooves, and that the tip of each hoof occupies a very small area, but at those points are the results of forces coming out of the shell. Alberto Muñiz realized that the crab is an invertebrate that has the conformation of its external skeleton adopted by nature to an inviolable internal format. It was then that he observed that in the upper part of the carapace, which is inside the crab, there are two bony points that are the termination of the symmetrical support of the crab's legs and that the steel structure would have to be the same, although This would later remain inside the sculpture and be lost to the viewer.

Construction

Once these first architectural calculations were completed, the artist planned to make them so that, placed on the road, the cars would cross under the sculpture, but he had never made a sculpture of this type, so he decided to propose the construction proposal on a scale 1:30, that is, 30 times larger than the model, taking into account that the head of the crab that he used for this purpose measured 10 cm., so he calculated the head of the sculpture with a measurement of 3 meters. Wide.

The crab was built in three parts: head and carapace, major grinding wheel and minor grinding wheel. First, the shell was built, then the head, the legs, then the largest tooth and finally the smallest. Workers from the maintenance department of the INTUR laundry and the Cárdenas Shipyard participated in its construction.

Location

It was finally decided to place the sculpture at the entrance to the city of Cárdenas, along the Varadero road, on a hill designed in a U-shape so that the sculpture could not be reached by anyone standing in front of it. Likewise, the idea of ​​placing it facing the road that gives access to Cárdenas, to avoid car accidents, was discarded, and it was located a few meters to the right and parallel to the road.

At dawn on May 3, 1990, the three parts of the crab were tied, remaining in their current position. The crab that had been left alive, of the three used by the sculptor, and that lasted the 14 months that the construction of the work lasted with its creators, is exposed in the Municipal Museum of Cárdenas Oscar María de Rojas. That same morning the people of Cardenas arrived at the site of the site to thank the sculptor for the creation of that banner of the municipality.

 

(Taken from Ecured)