A Canadian cow gets a bronze tribute in Cuba
Rosafé Signet, a Canadian bull known as the father of the Cuban dairy industry, will be honoured with a life-sized statue this coming week in Cuba.
Born in Ontario in 1954, Rosafé was sent to Cuba in 1961 in a $100,000 sale arranged by the Diefenbaker government. A personal favourite of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Rosafé would go on to father countless (one estimate indicates more than one million) dairy cattle and help attain the Cuban government’s goal of providing one litre of free milk per child per day.
Follwing Rosafé’s death in 1965, Castro commissioned noted Cuban sculptor Rita Longa to immortalize the bull. Unfortunately, after fashioning a bronze replica of Rosafé’s head, a metal shortage prohibited any further work and the project was shelved. The cast head then sat in Longa’s Havana studio until 1977, when it was noticed by Vancouver lawyer Carey Linde during a reception for the American Association of Jurists.
“It was just pure whimsy,” he tells the Georgia Straight by phone, “but it made sense that we complete this.”
Upon returning to Canada, Linde approached the Trudeau government about funding, without result. The idea then remained sidelined until he returned to Cuba four years ago.
“I took it upon myself to find out what happened to the head,” the 72-year-old Linde recalls, only to discover it had been lost. “In the process, I came across a number of people who were unbelievably keen to complete the job.”
Although the Cuban government donated the 600 kilograms of bronze required, more funding was still needed to finish the statue. Looking for novel ways to raise money, Linde tried the local crowdfunding platform FundRazr—the company was receptive, but its American-owned online-payment partner, WePay, was not, due to the U.S. embargo against Cuba. This, says Linde, contravenes the Canadian Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act (FEMA), which ensures Canadians a free hand to do business with Cuba.
“I’ve written to the attorney general, who handed it off to the minister in charge of the RCMP, Peter Blaney, and he’s not responding.”
WePay didn’t address the potential FEMA violation, but spokesperson Marybeth Grass noted by phone that Canadian account information is sometimes processed in its American data centres. “Accordingly, the laws of the United States apply to the use of that data.…WePay may not support transactions with Cuba directly or indirectly.” (As of press time, Blaney had not responded to an inquiry.)
Despite setbacks, Linde has successfully raised the funds from individual donors, as well as from his own pocket. “I’ve been literally selling my RRSPs to finish this thing,” he says.
Although Rosafé remains something of a bovine Norman Bethune—both have much stronger legacies in their adopted socialist countries than in their native Canada—that may soon change with the upcoming documentary Rosafé Siempre. Directed by Rolando Almirante, the film documents both Rosafé’s story and Linde’s campaign for a statue.
Linde’s 38-year effort clearly represents a labour of love, but he also notes deeper themes in Rosafé’s story, not just of international cooperation and Canadian independence but the thought that one being can represent the will of a nation.
“Rosafé,” Linde says, “is a striking symbol of the Cuban Revolution’s commitment to meeting the basic needs of its children and people.”
The finished statue, by sculptor Tomás Lara, will be unveiled May 20 at a studio in Havana.
Comments
4 Comments
R Tapanes
May 13, 2015 at 2:43pm
Although I have great respect for Mr. Linde and his desire to immortalize this Canadian steed, I find it ironic that this "striking symbol of the Cuban Revolution's commitment to meeting the basic needs...people" will really stand to point out the enormous failure of that system to do just that. I just returned from Cuba where there is no milk (only powdered) and children only have a right to even that (powdered) only until they are 7.
Jose Latour
May 14, 2015 at 3:24am
L
Cattle were among the most significant, albeit underestimated, Cuban
assets. The heard grew steadily year after year. There were 4.0 million head
in 1946; 6.3 million in 1958 (14). Then in 1963 Prime Minister Castro
decided that “red gold” needed a boost. The back cover of the
July/September 1964 issue of Revista de Comex, a quarterly published by
the Ministry of Foreign Trade, quoted the Maximum Leader: “In ten years
we will produce more milk than Holland and more cheese than France. That
is our ultimate goal in the cattle plan.”
Prize-winning Canadian cows and bulls were flown over to kick start a
nationwide artificial insemination program; newspapers regularly reported
on the number of gestated cows. Somewhere along t he road it dawned on
planners that to reach the goal of 10 million tons of raw sugar in 1970
hundreds of thousands of hectares of grazing land (the too large states of the
past) were to be planted with sugarcane. A simple theory solved the riddle:
exotic, high-calorie grasses, such as pangola, clover, and alfalfa were to be
planted in the remaining grazing land to compensate area reduction with
richer nourishment.
Additionally, a huge deforestation plan was conceived and carried out.
Che Guevara had already died in Bolivia and the brigade entrusted with
demolishing thorny bushes impenetrable to cattle and humans alike plus
groves of fruit tress and palms , was named after him. Television newsca sts
and newsreels in movie theaters projected scenes that, if shown today, would
make environmentalists cringe. From western to eastern Cuba whole groves
were blown up with dynamite; huge bulldozers, equipped with stinger blades
and dragging heavy iron chains, cleaned up.
69
Thirty-two years later, in Thirty-two years later, in 2006, the herd consisted of 3.7 million heads (15), 2.6 million less than in 1958 —a 42 percent decrease. The population is now 11.2 million, so from nearly one head of cattle per person in 1958 (0.94 is the exact number), the island dro pped to 0.33 head per capita. In 1964 there were 4.4 million cows; in 2006 only 2.4 million. On the positive side, the annual yield of milk per cow climbed to 2,366 kilograms in 1986, (16) something that was partially offset by the reduction in the number of animals. But twenty years later, in 2006, the average was 1,205 kilograms per cow (17), a 51 percent decrease.
The main reasons for
Jose Latour
May 14, 2015 at 3:25am
The main reasons for such epic debacle follow. In 1988 there were 2.5
million hectares of grazing land (2.0 million fewer than a 1957 estimate),
thousands of which had been lost to the same thorny bushes the Che
Guevara brigade had cleared twenty-one years earlier. Insufficient irrigation
and fertilization of high-calorie grasses (and maybe the climate) caused low
yields measured in mega calories per hectare.
For lack of food, cows reached reproductive life late in life and died and died prematurely. In the most efficient cattle -raising countries cows begin
reproduction at eighteen months and give birth to six or seven calves in their
lifetime. In Cuba it took between forty-two and fifty-five months for a cow
to begin reproduction and the number of birth per cows was around 2.5.
Since half the newborns were males, during reproductive life a Cuban cow
only gave birth to 1.25 females. Discounting those newborn that died before
giving birth and the barren, the rate of cow reproduction was less than one.
(18)
C Garcia
May 15, 2015 at 5:39pm
R Tapanes, all milk in the USA produced from concentrated animal feedlot operations is powdered. It's reconstituted into a liquid and sold as milk. It comes from the factory that way but it's still powder. Also, children do not need milk, the fake need was created by the advertising phenomenom of the dairy industry. Lactose intolerant children grow up healthy with strong bones and never drink from cows. ...I agree with Jose Latour.