Summarized History of Arango y Parreño's School in Güines
In the year 1813, Don Francisco de Arango Parreño had the idea of building out of his own pocket in this Villa, a building that would serve for the establishment of a free elementary school, whose building, once finished in all its parts, would belong in full ownership to the Villa of Güines, “with the precise and indispensable object and purpose of a learning school and no other.”
The construction work started in 1814 in the lot located on the presently named Maceo Street, between Havana and Trujillo Streets. On July 1817, in accordance to Arango’s wishes, stated in his letter dated June 27 of that year, the Town Council resolved to proceed with the appraisal of the school building, whose construction was reaching its end. To that effect, Arango himself appointed Messrs. Pablo Malherbe and Juan Aristigo to appraise the masonry part and Vidal Cuyen and José Duplá the carpentry.
According to the itemization in the original appraisal file, the building was divided into the following parts: Porch, main hall, dining room and two rooms. The walls, of solid masonry, were twenty-nine inches thick, raised on a foundation two and a half “varas” deep (2.09 meters) by one “vara” wide (0.835 meters).
The floors were made out of stone, lime and sand, covered with a layer of crushed stone three quarters of an inch thick. The porch’s floor, made out of bricks, had a height of fourteen inches.
The building, with twin façades, had a continuous terraced roof. The same was surrounded by a banister anchored in thirty one masonry pillars, with two hundred and one iron balustrades one inch thick each, finished with wild dilly handrails (“ácana” in Spanish), four inches wide.
Hardwood beams and braces held the roofs. The windows, twelve in number, were made out of cedar, with iron banisters. The building had 6 cedar doors. The main one made out of mahogany with copper nails and golden door knocker and latches, whose value reached three hundred pesos.
In the main hall and toward its end, there was a Choir, built out of false mastic, (“jocuma” in Spanish), mahogany, West Indian walnut, (“yaba” in Spanish) and cedar with its stairs and banisters.
The pillars of the porch’s arches were ten and were five “varas” wide (i.e., 4.18 meters) by six “varas” high (i.e., 5 meters). Between the arches and the terraced roof there was a masonry cornice.
In the building’s façade, on top of the middle part of the porch, there was a masonry spire or pyramid, four “varas” high (i.e., 3.34 meters), topped by a bronze weather vane.
At the pyramid’s base, embedded within a mahogany pedestal, there was a marble memorial stone two “varas” long (i.e., 1.67 meters). This monument cost seven hundred and four pesos.
When the appraisal was made, the school furniture consisted of seven cedar tables six “varas” long (i.e., 5 meters) by one and a quarter wide (i.e., 1.04 meters), thirty benches six “varas” long (i.e., 5 meters) by half “vara” wide (i.e., 0.42 meters) and four corner cedar pieces two and three quarters “varas” high (i.e., 2.30 meters). Notwithstanding its simplicity, the value of this furniture was stipulated at one thousand five hundred and twenty four pesos.
The total cost of the building, according to the appraisal, reached twenty eight thousand three hundred and fifty three pesos.
In the manner so described, the building for the Pious School was finished, donated to the Villa of Güines by Don Francisco de Arango Parreño and in this fashion it was inaugurated on November 17, 1820, being the Principal, Professor Don Esteban de Navea and President of the Town Council Don Manuel Martínez de Pinillos. A transcendental act that marked for this town, an extraordinary cultural step forward.
A little time later, on October 21, 1821, it was necessary to close down the school. The terraced roofs, due to a construction defect, started to come down.
Messrs. Rafael Almeira and Domingo Bengochea, appointed by the Municipal Corporation, with Architect Mr. Francisco Gea, as consultant, informed that it was necessary to replace the terraced roofs with wood and tile roofs and they prepared a budget for such work whose cost reached two thousand one hundred and two pesos four reals.
Arango was notified of the same, and he immediately started to send material for the rebuilding of the building, because the Town Council in those times, lacked resources to do it. But the local authorities, not even with the very important help of the illustrious donor, did anything to the building, that year after year, sustained more damage.
And one day, going to his sugar mill La Ninfa (i.e., The Nymph), Arango saw that nothing had been done. When he reached his home at the farm, deeply disturbed by the indifference shown by the Municipal Corporation for three years in this delicate matter, he sent to the Mayor, the following letter:
“Seeing that after three years all that has been done is to receive and distract from its purpose the tiles and wood that you requested for the rebuilding of the building I built with the purpose of establishing in that Villa an elementary school, it seems to me that it is time to request from you that in my name you meet with the Town Council so they would agree to take the appropriate measures; in the supposed case that due to the misfortunes that have prevented me from carrying out this enterprise demand also that if the Town Council does not execute it on its part, then I would be able to make something out of a building that is going to be lost. May God keep you for many years. La Ninfa Sugar Mill and February 20, 1824. Francisco Arango. Mr. Don Domingo Álvarez, Ordinary Mayor of the Villa of Güines.”
Arango’s anger couldn’t be more justified. With this letter containing such forceful reproach, the Town Council resolved to immediately carry out the rebuilding of the school building, using the proceeds from public collections and a two thousand pesos bequeath to the school, made by Don Francisco Vizarrón upon his death.
On June 5, 1824 the rebuilding of the school building started under the supervision of Regents Don Rafael Almeira and Don Domingo Bengochea and on December of that year, the work was completed and the school started to function again.
In 1846 a terrible hurricane destroyed the school building almost in its entirety, being indefinitely closed due to that cause.
For a period of sixteen years this learning center remained closed and inactive. In 1862, Don Inocencio de las Peñas y Magallar, then Lieutenant Governor of Güines, conceived the praiseworthy purpose of reconstructing that building whose ruinous situation opened a regrettable parenthesis in Güines’s education.
Peñas got from the residents very effective support and in a little time, the building was ready to continue with its great teaching task that started forty-two years before. On November 19,1862, with great pomp, the reopening of the school took place.
Again in 1915 the building was in bad shape and it was closed until 1917 in which it was again reopened, after several repairs.
Five years later, in 1922, the school building was again closed, but this time far from doing repairs to the same as done in previous occasions, it was left completely abandoned. The roofs of the interior rooms, lacking tiles because they were pilfered, started to crumble, until July 13, 1931 when some walls and all the roofs came down.
On November 14, 1933, by order of the de facto Mayor Mr. Francisco Fernández Tosco, the venerable ruins were totally demolished, and of the legendary building, which always was the most important Güinero monument, the only part that remained, was its front wall.
Beyond that wall, in the empty lot, there is like a breath of sadness and a continuous murmur of anger and reproach…
Translated by the staff of Círculo Güinero de Los Ángeles
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