By: Oreidis Pimentel Pérez

The postal items, especially stamps, contribute to perpetuate the history that they reflect according to the commemorations or themes alluded to; However, it is necessary to know in depth so as not to make mistakes such as the one that occurred with a special postage stamp for the 60th anniversary of the Seville-Camagüey flight by the aviators Mariano Barberán and Joaquín Collar.

In 1993 the Ministry of Communications put into circulation a commemorative value with a map, plane and the monument erected in the vicinity of the Casino Campestre in Camagüey (luckily, before the bronze glasses from Barberán were stolen), but they made a mistake in the model of the plane of the interoceanic trip.

They used a Fokker trimotor airliner instead of a Breguet single engine called “Cuatro Vientos! With such an aircraft the nonstop flight would not have had the slightest significance. To make matters worse, the plane was placed in reverse, making the trip from Camagüey to Seville.

Until then, the misunderstandings seemed to end, however they increased because the First Day postal ceremony (FDC) was held at the “Cuatro Vientos” hotel in the Santa Lucía resort, on the north coast of Camaguey; and the occasion served for the Ignacio Agramonte Philatelic Club to also make its own special cancellation. Well, in the latter, the stamp used also messed with the plane! Again the “Cuatro Vientos” confused, this time with the Lockeed Sirius “September 4th” that was used to repeat the trip in 1936.

The special postmark was based on a drawing by Roberto Quintana for the 1971 commemorative stamp of Antonio Menéndez Peláez, which incidentally also contains a slip; because he did not fly with a silver-red color combination (original model bought from the Dupont company in Cienfuegos), but silver and blue, the emblems of the Cuban air force.

The inexplicable thing about the previous cases is that although the 1993 stamp did not have an adequate study of the images, for the special cancellation of that year on the beach of Santa Lucía, there were already in Camagüey two previous cancellations with the correct image of the “Cuatro Vientos”, specifically those of 1988 (black and purple ink) and 1991 (black).

As conclusions we have to make stamps and pieces on the history of aviation … it is necessary to learn more about flights and airplanes.

Translated by: Aileen Álvarez García