Saint John Cemetery . Intended to provide funeral services to the municipality of Melena del Sur .
History
Funeral spaces in rural areas differed from those in major cities, in Havana for example, distinguished by its luxury and ostentation. [1] Melena del Sur, from a socioeconomic point of view, was a humble and small town, founded in 1768 after the López Arcos family obtained the Santa Bárbara and San Juan de Melena coral reefs. [2] The formation of the town was slow and gradual, the hamlet emerged first and did not have a Catholic temple until 1799 , its first oratory was of yagua and guano, in its rear part the first cemetery of the town was located, the lands were ceded by the wealthy Mrs. Leonor Blanco. [3]
For the year 1880 an epidemic of smallpox is unleashed in the melenero territory, for this reason the city council requests permission for the construction of cemeteries in the farms that still lacked this, a manuscript of the time states:
“… to avoid the spread of smallpox when respectful consultation is made to the EU on whether farms that do not have an authorized cemetery can designate a separate and solitary place where to bury those who die of smallpox, taking care to fence it conveniently. This query is due to the fact that a case has been declared in one of the farms that is invaded in this term and it lacks a sacred place where to bury the patient in case of death, having to take him to the village cemetery to bury him, exposing ourselves to introduce the epidemic in the village…” [4]
The manuscript is the first reliable document that has been found on the existence of the cemetery in the town, as well as the allusion to other holy fields on farms in the territory, which we have been able to verify in documents of the time such as wills and inventories of mills, An example is the cemetery of the La Luisa mill, formed by masonry walls and partly sawn support with its door. [5]
The urban Catholic cemetery was located perhaps until the end of the first half of the 19th century in the courtyard of the Catholic church. The creation of a new holy field on the outskirts of the population center was due, among other things, to the calls for attention made by the King of Spain Carlos III in 1787 and his descendant King Carlos IV in 1799 , referring to the health situations caused by the burials inside the churches, as well as the cemeteries inside the towns.
In short, the first hermitage or oratory in Melena had its seat in San Juan square, today Central Park and the first cemetery was located at the bottom of the oratory as was the custom of the time, which can be verified in the existing legacies in the parish archive. of Guara. A stone wall was built for its cemetery when the church was built in 1852 , later when burials were prohibited by Bishop Juan José Díaz de Espada y Landa, who modified ancient customs, eliminating burials inside the church and isolating the village cemeteries. In the second half of the 19th century , it was moved to the cemetery for its current location.
The current Catholic cemetery “San Juan Bautista” until the 1960s was owned by the Catholic Church, all services were charged and controlled by it. According to news, the current Melena del Sur cemetery was officially inaugurated in 1892 . But the cemetery was located in the current place before this date, since the oldest burial located to date dates from 1890 , [6] an analysis of the space, due to the position of this burial, leads us to consider that there were several before this . In the local newspaper “Las Noticias”, from January – February 1949, the headline “Urgent expansion of the cemetery” appears, in which it is stated that the approval by the Gómez Mena company to cede the necessary land is pending. Subsequent local periodicals state that the municipal cemetery was expanded, in addition to the construction of its perimeter fences and a room to perform autopsies. [7]
The Melena cemetery is humble from the perspective of funerary arts, a parallelism established with the very structure of the town of the living. In its interior rest illustrious sons of Melena del Sur and others who, without being natives, contributed much from various spheres to the development of the town. It is worth noting the prolific historian Gregorio Delgado Fernández, the journalist Félix Muñoz Gilbort , the musician Mario Oropesa, also in this holy field are the remains of Máximo Zertucha who was the last doctor of General Antonio Maceo as well as the tombs of the revolutionary martyrs Rogelio Perea and Gregorio Arlee Mañalich
