On October 6th, 1814, the bureaucratic and servile city council of the town of Puerto Príncipe, current city of Camagüey, met in the old building on the corner of the Constitución square with the aim of evaluating one of the most revolutionary projects that until the date would have been submitted for possible approval.
The trustee Manuel de Zayas stated that after receiving from the French immigrant Jean Luis Cabanis his request to practice “medicine”, he called the attention of the president of the council in the sense of: “[…] that Don Luis Cabanis be required some other document qualifying your knowledge in Medicine to approve your request, […] ”. For more plot details:
“[…] The City Council agreed in its hearing that in order to proceed with the greatest success, the notebook that in French language has presented Don Juan Luis to the official accountant Real Don Luis de Santiago be handed over to him so that he can translate it [crossed out:“ the indicated paper “] in Spanish, in order to find out the City Council of its content, reserving the competent determination on the rest indicated by its representation”.
On October 25th, the city council met again. Cabanis was waiting for the authorization of his ingenious and useful project, which we know from his insistence on assuming the “medical faculty in this city”, moreover, specifying that he “had no intention of doing it in another city in the country”. So the doctor seemed to feel comfortable in Camagüey, a beautiful land where he intended to “plant a regular Botanical Garden.”
So far everything seemed to favor Cabanis, because according to what was lobbied:
“In view of what was reported by the official accountant Real Don Luis de Santiago in order that the theses defended by Don Luis Cabanis as manifested in the notebook presented to the body [Council] in French are very well answered, agreed the City Council, Taking again into consideration the request of Cabanis: that in order to get the green light he requested to practice medicine in this population, by not being in the spheres of the powers of the body, this permission is prevented from happening where it corresponds: that As for the others to which Don Luis’s statement about planting a regular botanical garden is contracted, of course he is allowed in accordance with the laws, and also the teaching of astronomical science that he also offers to practice on these lands ”.
The city council had not objected to the “Botanical Garden” and the teaching of Astronomy. Nothing political seemed to mediate known the French origin of the scientist (from the France of the Emperor Napoleon). The greater responsibility of the execution would fall on him, since the selection of experts is his responsibility; locate feasible land; estimate the location of laboratories and equipment for botanical and astronomical research purposes and for medical and pharmaceutical use; among other actions.
Apparently, Cabanis wanted Puerto Príncipe to be one of the first cities in the New World to have a Botanical Garden, knowing that since 1813 its Economic Council made efforts through its “enlightened” to further develop the rich cattle region, to which studies of Medicine, Agriculture, Botany, Economy, Commerce and Industry were needed.
The suspicious obstacle
But the liberation of the French from the absolutist king Ferdinand Seventh made him return to the throne on March 22nd, 1814, and with this he repealed the liberal Constitution on May 4th, ending the period of liberal and democratic thinking in the American colonies. Faced with this adverse situation, the Economic Council and members of the Enlightenment stopped insisting that the city council carry out the Cabanis garden. From now on, the work would no longer be discussed, it was a “case closed”; no more was known of the elusive Frenchman who, undoubtedly, had to leave the Greater Antilles due to the dramatic turn that things took.
The new era for the Cabanis garden
Almost a century later, in September 1954, a memorandum prepared by the Asociación Acción Cívica Camagüeyana addressed to the Provincial Government, once again insisted on the garden, —without Cabanis—, this time proposing its opening in the “Sierra de Cubitas Provincial Park”, project not carried out either.
Finally, in 2014, after several proposals and after scientific deliberations, in the lands of the former Agricultural Farm of Camagüey, which comprise a portion of the 72 hectares of the current Camagüey Botanical Park, the utopia of Cabanis could materialize, in space named after the prominent local botanist Ing. Julián Baldomero Acuña Galé.
Camagüey, because it did not suffer from forgetfulness, did not make the doctor Jean Louis Cabanis invisible. More than 200 years after his visit to Puerto Príncipe, he deserves to be considered among the honorary founders of our Camagüey Botanical Garden.
