• Submitted by: manso
• International
• 05 / 28 / 2011

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By Ariel Soler C. The ancients city in Cuba received as if it were for them the Orden of Civil Merit, given by Juan Carlos I, King of Spain, to Alejandro Hartmann, historian of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Baracoa.

In declarations made to AIN, after reaching a few hours ago his birth city of Baracoa (Guantanamo province), the multi-award winner researcher dedicated his recognition to the 500 years of existence of the First Cuban Village, founded by Diego Velázquez on August 15, 1511.

He defined his people as “the essence of my everyday life, the heart of every day” and he added –as he did in Havana when he received the prize- that “if there hadn´t existed that indigenous Baracoa, that Spanish Baracoa of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, this recognitian would have made no sense”.

Nidia Pérez Matos, his wife and companion for 38 years, expressed the satisfaction of the family for the recognition, “very well deserved by someone who lives for this city, filled with natural beauty and a very rich history, that goes back to 1492, when Colon reached Puerto Santo.

Pérez Matos comments that, in order to share the award with his fellow citizens right in the middle of the street, “today Hartmann went out of the house with the award in his usual walk towards the Matachín Museum, found in the oposite end of this long and slender city, between the sea and the mountain”.

Hartmann is the director of the Matachín Museum, an ancient Spanish fort that defended the city of the attacks of pirates and corsairs, a place that undertakes an important task in communitarian education.

Cubarte Translation Staff