UNESCO Director Praises Legacy of Cuban Historian Eusebio Leal

May 31, 2022

UNESCO dressed up to pay homage to Cuban Eusebio Leal, who was director of the Office of the Historian of Havana, and whom the director general of the institution defined as an exceptional man.

UNESCO's director general, Audrey Azoulay, declared herself "moved to pay tribute to an exceptional and action-oriented man, a master who dreamed of a utopia, and who carried out great work to achieve it, and a great friend of UNESCO".

The statement by the high-ranking official came during the opening of a photographic exhibition that brought together a synthesis of his life, linked to his long career committed to heritage, cultural, social and economic programs fundamentally linked to the rehabilitation of Old Havana, of which he was responsible as director of the Office of the Historian of Havana.

Azoulay recalled her visit to Cuba in 2019 and where, despite the serious illness that already affected Leal, he served her as a guide to a city which he showed with "an encyclopedic knowledge", and whose "architectural polyphony that he imagined, reflected on and rehabilitated" should serve us "so that we continue dreaming of it as he did", she said.

"Few historians can feel so proud and be so committed to a city as Eusebio Leal was with Havana", she added, and to which "he dedicated his entire life to protecting it, and now we must expand and continue the task that he carried out", Azoulay considered.

"More than three thousand buildings, 350 of which are more than three centuries old, and which he studied, in order to carry out a work with passion and precision, with a global and meticulous vision, and who knew how to invent an innovative, original and efficient management model, where he integrated the recovery of heritage with the social, economic and cultural life of the population that inhabited it", she explained.

And regarding this objective of the Historian, she pointed out that "it was not only about restoring and protecting its architecture, but also about placing culture and all the intangible heritage of a city at its center, along with its economic and social dimension".

For UNESCO's director general, his work "mobilizes us to continue along that line for Cuba to protect its heritage and betting on sustainable tourism, and also for all of the Caribbean, with the perspective that Eusebio Leal left us".

In that sense, she considered that "the best tribute is to recognize him as a master, but also to give continuity to work that brought pride to a city, to a country and also to us at UNESCO".

Azoulay also had words of encouragement for the families of the victims of the tragic accident that occurred at the Hotel Saratoga in Havana, and to whom she sent a message of condolence.

After concluding her remarks, Cuba's ambassador to UNESCO, Yahima Equivel, thanked the organizers of this tribute event and presented to the director a double photographic album, which contains the photographic memory of all the work that Eusebio Leal developed from the time he was at the head of the Office of the Historian.