Christ of Havana

This guide to the Christ of Havana follows sculptor Jilma Madera, who spent years carving the harbor-side statue from sixty-seven blocks of Carrara marble blessed block by block by Pope Pius XII, only for lightning to shear off its head the same day in January 1959 that Fidel Castro's forces reached the city. It traces the spare block of marble Madera had set aside before the stone ever left Italy, and the months she spent back on the scaffolding matching a face she had already carved once. The hilltop was struck by lightning again more than once in the years that followed.