In Santiago de Cuba, nestled among ferns and imported marble, lies what may be the most talked-about funerary monument on the Island: a granite rock with a niche, dubbed the "monolith," surrounded by a ceremony that seems imported from Red Square to Santa Ifigenia.
The sculptor Antonio Matos Díaz, responsible for carving the stone where the ashes of the dictator Fidel Castro rest, spares no effort in devotion. According to what he confessed to the cameras of Cuban Television, he “sees” the historic leader “every day”.
"I see Fidel every day, victorious, just as he referred to it on that first of January in '59 when he entered Santiago de Cuba and spoke about the strength of the revolution in those two pillars that are the Sierra Maestra and Santiago de Cuba," he said excitedly, as if the stone were some sort of crystal ball instead of the grain of corn that it is said to represent.
The fervor is not diminished: for him, the 24-ton mass is a "sacred altar of the homeland," and working on it was a "historical mission" entrusted to two "humble sons," himself, a son of Sagua de Tánamo, "martyr city," and his assistant. On the eve of the 99th anniversary of the birth of the leader of the so-called "revolution," the Cuban state media does not hold back on its sentimentalities.
The work, ordered by Raúl Castro and overseen by figures such as Juan Almeida and Eusebio Leal, remained a secret for years. Matos spent six of those years isolated in an area with restricted access, sculpting the block extracted from the Gran Piedra. Even his family did not know what he was doing. According to the official narrative, the result “will endure for a lifetime.”
The ritual surrounding the "eternal rock" includes honor guards, shifts every half hour, and the solemn music composed by Almeida. All of this takes place in a cemetery that also houses the graves of Martí and other notable figures, but where Fidel's stone has become the focal point of pilgrimages, tears, and speeches that intertwine the independence of the 19th century with the Revolution of 1959.
Matos recounted that Castro's death caught him recovering from a hernia operation, but he still went to seal the lid of the Guatemalan green marble with the name “Fidel” in gold letters.
The set is complemented with Bayamo cream marble, river stones linked to the guerrilla, and planters containing coffee and ferns from the Sierra Maestra, in a symbolic display that, according to the state media, “preserves for future generations” the legacy of the commander.
Meanwhile, for the sculptor, the dialogue with the absent one remains alive: "Commander, what else do I have to do?" he asks mentally every time he completes a task. And thus, amidst stone, solemnity, and the cult of personality, the rock is still there: immovable, like the story that surrounds it.
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