  
Old hospice next to the shrine in El Cobre (left); Rectory next to Miami hermitage (center); Entrance (right). |
 |
< 1 >
| < |
|
Entrance to the Ermita de la Caridad National Shrine in Miami with neighboring Mercy hospital in the background, December, 2007. |
The Miami hermitage to Our Lady of Charity, the patron saint of Cuba, represents itself as a "national shrine." The designation elicits knotty questions regarding the locus of the nation, the nature of shrines and the conflation between these terms. The title may simply denote a Catholic Marian shrine (of Cuban people) in the US nation. But it may also allude in more complicated ways to a (cloned) shrine in a relocated Cuban nation, if not overtly to a shrine to the (Cuban) nation itself. Cubans from different regions of the island residing in different cities of the USA make pilgrimages to the site.
The hermitage of Miami is built next to a Catholic hospital thereby recreating the centuries-old healing associations of the island's Marian shrine. In the play of allusions at work in this site, the rectory office building next to the Miami hermitage is reminiscent of the old hospice in El Cobre.
|
