By  PABLO OSORIA RAMiREZ

The carving of the Cemi of the Grant tierra ( Great land), the most important Indian sculpture with human representation in the Antilles came five centuries ago from the hand of naked men that inhabited the eastern entrance of the Cuban archipelago.

Known as Taino, such group of Cuban inhabitants got their greatest cultural development in the region of the insular Caribbean at the time of the encounter of the two worlds, the New and the Old.

The sculpture is 92 centimeters tall, it has long and cylindrical shape,  similar to the  tobacco, it is carved in the strong wood known as black Guayacan, tree original from the Southeast of Cuba.

The primitive people used beautiful sea shells from the east of the island to make the eyes, nose, mouth and other human characters of what was one of their goddess.

At the beginning o the last century, two farmers found the important sculpture in the Gran Tierra Plateau, a marine terrace belonging to Maisi municipality. The Cemi, the oldest in Cuba, is exhibited now in the anthropological museum Doctor Luis Montane, in Havana University.

The Cemi of Gran Tierra is known also as the Tobacco God for it similarity with a giant black tobacco.

The Indian relic reflects the image of one of the Taino goddess, found in stone too, in 1915,   in Maisi, in the cavern La Patana together with other six animal figures.

The author of such finding was the American archaeologist Mark Harrington, who transported the calcareous formation to the American Indian Museum of New York where it is still in exhibition.
 
 In 1997 Guantanamo government approved the Cemi of Gran Tierra to become the symbol of the province.

Small imitations of the Cemi are given each year to personalities of the counry for their important contribution to the development of the territory.

 The Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz was the first one to get such recognition, later was given, among others, to  the General of the Army Raul Castro Ruz,  to Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez, first Latin-American cosmonaut and to Feliz Savon, several times Olympic and world boxing champion.