From the authorship of Roger Arrazcaeta Delgado and Jorge F. Garcell Domínguez, published by Montecallado Publishing House.
A necessary book that dismantles an important group of paradigms which had been present in previous studies on the rock art of Cuba for decades, including those on the sites of the called Region Pictográfica de Guara.
The research undertaken by Roger Arrazcaeta and Jorge F. Garcell, together with their work team, whose results are presented in this essay, redefines the view we have made of these cave paintings from the archeology, making use of the honesty that must characterize science. The reader is exposed to the elements of all the designs that appear in these localities, breaking with the monothematic look towards the images of indeterminate quadrupeds with horns that had characterized the approaches of the last three decades. This way, the reader receives real information from the object of study, and is able to perceive how, for years, the information on these sites was handled by bringing the braza to the pan
The work presented by Arrazcaeta and Garcell also approaches the geomorphic or toponymic problems of the area under study, presenting a fair claim for the redefinition of the area and the caves as Cuevas de Las Charca, in tune with the geographical location and the geology surrounding them, but, moreover, in correspondence with the popular and regional culture that has called these caves for more than three centuries.
Finally, this book introduces us in a reanalysis on the possible executors of this art, also breaking the traditional schemes, and dismantling in a structured form the tendencies to consider it of Afrocuban origin. Here we find a complete discussion of the numerous objects and archaeological elements that, since 1947, have been recovered by the researchers in the region, where aboriginal omnipresence is appreciated throughout the area.
In this sense, the work does not reject the postcolombian invoice of the drawings, taking into account their themes and morphology, but associates them – starting, as we have already said, with archaeological evidence and, above all, historical documents dusted in archives by the authors, with the aborigines of the so-called Pueblo Indio de Guanabacoa, a reservation established by the Spaniards on June 12, 1554, to “protect” the native inhabitants after His Majesty granted them freedom
Las cuevas de Las Charcas. Rock Art in Mayabeque is a proposal where the criticism and the questioning of the old paradigms are not ethereal, are based on the work experiences of their authors, in those places, for more than thirty years, which has endowed them with an enviable volume of archaeological and historical information.
This has allowed them to treasure a wealth of knowledge that no other Cuban researcher can show. Whether or not we are in agreement with some of the approaches of this work, we must recognize that it is the fruit of the work of the most authoritative investigators to explain and interpret the historical and social evolution of cave art in Las Charcas caves.