Like most of the decisions made by the Communist government, the logic behind why an array of life-size bronze statues suddenly started to appear across Old Havana in the 2010s was never made clear. At the eighteenth-century Plaza San Francisco, I was surprised to find a flirtatious vision of Frédéric Chopin, a Polish composer of the first half of the nineteenth century sitting on a bench. Everyone I knew asked themselves, why him? After all, he had never visited Cuba nor composed a piece about Cuba. Perhaps, Cubans said, Eusebio Leal, the Historian of the City and long-time “czar” of restoration there, decided that the romantic style of his music was reason enough. Old Havana, July 2016.
