The death of a person is always an opportunity to remember her life, and if she is one of the most notable female writers in Camagüey, the cradle of Cuban Literature, it implies a great challenge to do so from a not strictly literary approach. An approach to Aurelia Castillo, who died on August 6th, 1920, leads to challenging her admirers both artistically and the defenders of local feminist voices.
Aurelia Castillo, is one of the most important personalities of the Cuban culture of the 19th and early 20th centuries, her literary merits are multiple, her mark through poetry, legends, fables, chronicles, and epistolary – more intimate prose – which he held with various figures, invites us to meet again with an extraordinary woman.
On the other hand, it is undeniable that Camagüey owes the writer, for her literary works, the possibility of reconstructing from Camaguey, -for foreigners an inexplicable term, but for locals almost a synonym of identity-, the small homeland, the one that the author with a peculiar mastery drew in her vast literary production.
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If you still have your doubts, you can read the sonnet “En la muerte de El Lugareño”, dedicated to Gaspar Betancourt Cisneros, in the same way by poetizing the legend of the water from the waterpot, it immortalizes one of the traditions that has come down to our days in the cultural memory of the people of Camagüey and beyond their region.
Other personalities such as Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, of whom she made a biography, and at the same time was also the architect of the various activities held for the centenary of the writer’s birth in 1914, and the book “Ignacio Agramonte in private life”, distinguish Aurelia Castillo as a champion of those she knew and admired, as well as those who appreciate her countrymen in the reconstruction of local identity.
Her memory
However, it hurts that in his hometown, despite the efforts to erect a monument to his memory since the first decades of the last century, it has not been possible to materialize that desire, few places bear his name, the most important is the old Public School No 1, its students always paid her a token of love with various gestures, including an album made with poetry and photos that is exhibited in the Ignacio Agramonte Provincial Museum along with other belongings.
Likewise, few city dwellers since September 1920, when the request was approved by the City Council for the change of name, manage to identify the old Astilleros Street, by that of this great Camagüeyana.
However, it is comforting that researchers from the patio such as Dr. C. Olga García Yero, and others from the national sphere have carried out particular studies on her that return the woman, intellectual and above all to that Camagueyana closest to her countrymen.
Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García
