CubaPLUS Magazine

Although it is obviously a zoological rarity, generated by genetic anomalies, sightings of specimens of the so-called white aura (Cathartes aura) have been reported in nature and in the island's habitats, within the family whose vulgar name, in which the black color of its plumage predominates.

From a scientific point of view, the species belongs to the vulturid family and up to the present day these well-known scavengers regularly cross the skies, before the indifferent gaze of people, aware of their functions in the chain of life, generally very useful to humans.

Neither popular nor loved, but neither hated, culture has generated various myths in which those birds or humans with which they are compared, end up badly off. But going back to the Camagüeyan legend of the white aura, it is said that around the year 1860 a specimen of exceptional white plumage and pink head was captured in that land in central Cuba, flying in the middle of a flock of vulgar tiñosas (black) auras, in the vicinity of the San Lázaro hospital and Quinta Simoni.

That hospital had been founded by the Franciscan Father José de la Cruz Espí (1763-1838), better known as Father Valencia, who enjoyed, even after his death, the grateful memory of the people of Puerto Príncipe de Camagüey, for his kindness and work for the good of the suffering lepers, and even as a mediator of complaints.

That surprising white aura was very tame when the sick approached the place where it had settled and captured it. Another version states that the person who captured the bird was Dr. José Ramón Simoni Ricardo, then honorary director of the hospital. The truth was that with the death of good-natured Father Valencia, homelessness and a lack of food for those confined to the lazaretto it was very sad, since this charitable work had been the pride of the city during the life of its founder.

Without Father Valencia, a horror story tells that the scavengers began to fly over the miserable institution, waiting for its starving tenants to die in the open air and give an account of them. Then, the strange white aura appeared, also strange in behavior. That albino specimen allowed himself to be caught without resistance, as if he wanted to be in that macabre place of his own free will.

Soon, throughout the city the miracle was commented that the soul of the religious benefactor, so many times cried out by the unfortunate lepers, had come down to accompany them. And the commotion was such that it generated an exhibition of the white aura, whose entrance fee was charged. The funds generated with this were initially used to alleviate the situation of the sick. But soon some heartless, seeing the wealth of profits that the rare bird represented, began to display it throughout the country and it is even said that it was raffled off and taken away from the lazaretto, where it was so needed. .

One account tells us that when it was moved to the western province of Matanzas, in perfect health, it was acquired there by the naturalist Don Francisco Ximeno, for his personal zoo, where he later died around 1864.

Taxidermy work was immediately carried out for its conservation. In 1884 the wise Ximeno sold the piece to the Natural History Museum of the Provincial Secondary Education Institute, where it remained for almost a century.

In summary, today it can be admired in the Provincial Museum of the Athens of Cuba, in the Palacio de Junco. Less old, and without counting the original myth, there is another white aura in the Provincial Museum of Camagüey. It was the writer and eminent Cuban and princely poet, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, one of the first diffusers of the legend of the white aura in the land of shepherds and hats.