Colegio de Belén, Havana

Her Majesty Isabella II, Queen of Spain, issued a royal charter in the year 1854 founding the Colegio de Belén (Belen School) in Havana, Cuba. Belen began its educational work in the building formerly occupied by the convent and convalescent hospital of Our Lady of Belén in Havana Vieja. A meteorological observatory was established in 1857. A facility was built in 1896.^[5]

The building was constructed on sixty acres of land that had been donated and was to be used as the main building of the Colegio de Belén. The original building, a convent in Havana Vieja had been opened in 1854 within the premises of the formerly occupied convent and convalescent hospital of Our Lady of Belen. Those premises had become unsuitable and badly located due to the change of atmosphere in the neighborhood and the growth of the city. The project was designed by the Cuban architectural firm of Morales & Cia (architect Leonardo Morales y Pedroso and Engineer Luis Morales y Pedroso) in 1925, with an unlimited budget for designing a religious school, the Colegio de Belén, Havana.^[6]

From 1925 to 1961, and located in the Marianao municipality, on an area of approximately 190,000 m2, emerged in the twenties of the last century, the new building with plans approved in Rome by Wlodimiro Ledochowsky, General of the Society of Jesus, in June 1921.

In mid-1923 the construction of this property was started, carried out by the company of architects and engineers Morales y Compañía Arquitectos, being built nine radiating pavilions, a central chapel of three floors, an entrance pavilion that had a fourth level where it was located the observatory. Its inaugural activities were carried out on December 19, 20 and 21, 1925, beginning its first course in January 1926.^[4]The result was a monumental pan-optical edifice with an extensive neoclassical façade perpendicular to the large chapel and four large courtyards, recalling the building housing the convent in Havana Vieja, with three stories of porticoed galleries to link nine radial pavilions, the appearance is of instrumentality which is supported both in the design resources and the unusual dimensions of the spaces. The structure is built from the concrete-covered steel structure, the flooring, covered with tiles, and the roof are monolithic reinforced concrete slabs.

The chapel was centrally located in plan, it had a wide central nave of triple height with a mural by Hipolito Hidalgo de Caviedes (1901–1994). It had two side aisles. El Colegio de Belen was known as "The Palace of Education."

In 1961 the government of Fidel Castro (himself a graduate of Belen) confiscated all private and religious schools in Cuba. Castro expelled the Jesuits and declared the government of Cuba an atheist government.^[7] Castro's government nationalized businesses and banks, confiscating more than $1 billion in American-owned property. Thousands of those dubbed “enemies of the revolution” were executed or imprisoned, and the school curriculum was reshaped by communist doctrine. Free speech was not an option, and the Cuban socialist press was an extension of the government.^[7][8]

Calle Compostela, between Luz y Acosta (Havana, 1854–1925).

• 1. Bartolomé Munar (1854–1857)
• 2. Manuel Solís Pajares (Interino 1857–1858)
• 3. José María Lluch (1858–1862)
• 4. Buenaventura Feliú (1862–1868)
• 5. Andrés García Rivas (1868–1874)
• 6. Angel Rosendo Gallo (1874–1881)
• 7. Tomás Ipiña (1881–1885)
• 8. Isidoro Zameza (1885–1889)
• 9. Benigno Iriarte (1889–1893)
• 10. José María Palacio (1893–1899)
• 11. Vicente Leza (1899–1908)
• 12. Silverio Eraña (1908–1909)
• 13. Fernando Ansoleaga(1909–1915)
• 14. Antonino Oráa (1915–1918)
• 15. Pedro Abad 1918-1922
• 16. Claudio García Herrero (1922–1924)
• 17. Camilo García (1924–1925)

• 18. Antonio Galán (1925–1930)
• 19. Enrique Carvajal (1930–1931)
• 20. Ignacio Francia (1931–1938)
• 21. Ramón Calvo Hernández-Agero (1938–1940)
• 22. Daniel Baldor de la Vega (1940–1947)
• 23. Ceferino Ruiz Rodríguez (1947–1953)
• 24. Miguel Angel Larrucea de la Mora (1953–1956)
• 25. Eduardo Martínez Márquez (1956–1959)
• 26. Daniel Baldor de la Vega(1959)
• 27. Ramón Calvo Hernández(1959–1961)^[9]

Images from the 1940s and 50s of the Colegio de Belen:

• 
  Colegio de Belen_Floor plan by Leonardo Morales y Pedroso, ca 1925.
• 
  Courtyad, detail.
• 
  Hallways
• 
  Auditorium
• 
  Fidel Castro, 2nd from left. ca. 1943.
• 
  Lunch room
• 
  Swimming pool.

• La Habana, Guia de Arquitectura, Maria Elena Zequeira & Eduardo Luis Rodriguez Fernandez, editors (Sevilla, Spain: A.G. Novograf, S.A., 1998) ISBN 84-8095-143-5 (in Spanish)

• The Society of Jesus’ Contemporary History in Cuba
• El Colegio de Belén – Escuelas de La Habana
• El célebre observatorio de los jesuitas en La Habana
• Antiguo Convento de Belén hoy proyecto humanitario y museo de la meteorología en La Habana

• RELIGIOUS REPRESSION IN CUBA: Its Evolution and Present Status

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Havana".

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