On March 28, a monument to Francisco de Miranda, national hero of Venezuela, was erected at the Park of the Tercentenary to St.Petersburg.
On March 28, a monument to Francisco de Miranda, national hero of Venezuela, was erected at the Park of the Tercentenary to St.Petersburg.
The monument, made by Jose Angel Carasco, a Venezuelan sculptor, was donated to Russia by President Hugo Chavez.
The opening ceremony was attended by A.V.Prokhorenko, Member of St.Petersburg Government, Chairman of the Committee for External Relations, and Hugo Jose Garcia Hernandez, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Venezuela to Russia.
***
Francisco de Miranda was born in Spain on March 28, 1750.
He became the first Latino-American representative who established contacts with Russia. The Empress Catherine II awarded him the rank of colonel of the Russian army.
It was the same rank he had In the Spanish army, as he was an aide-de-camp to the general-captain of Cuba. At that time, the war for independence was waged in North America. France and Spain supported the Americans who fought against England. For this reason, Francisco Miranda got to Florida. Then he left for Europe, travelled to England, Turkey, Russia. In St.Petersburg, Miranda met with Potemkin, the favourite of Empress Catherine II, who introduced him to the empress. Catherine liked the brave warrior: not only she awarded him the rank of colonel, but also gave him money to fight the tyranny of the Spanish in Latin America.
Francisco Miranda spent in Russia almost a year. From the first day he was fascinated by St.Petersburg. Venezuelan was conquered by the splendour and magnificence of the palaces of the northern capital. Particularly he admired the palace of Prince Potemkin. In his diary, translated into Russian, Miranda wrote: “There is every reason to say that it is the palace which, among the contemporary buildings, most of all reminds the ancient Roman baths, whose ruins we can now watch in Italy, as of its gorgeousness and splendour”.
In 1787, Francisco Miranda spent three months in the house, now located at 52 Bolshaya Morskaya St. He made friends with A.I.Vyazemskiy (the father of the writer), the architect and adept in culture N.A.Lvov, Chancellor A.A.Bezborodko.
Miranda moved from Russia to Paris, where the revolution was flaming up, he commanded a division and became a general. His name is engraved on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He returned to his homeland at a time when the rebellion broke out in Caracas. The patriots invited Miranda to command the troops, and the Congress awarded him the title of generalissimo. The Spanish suppressed the revolt and Miranda, arrested, was taken to Spain. There he was kept in chains, the ending links of which were fastened onto the walls. Only when Miranda died, his body was relieved from the chains and secretly buried at an undisclosed location.
The photos were provided by the Administration of Primorskiy District of St.Petersburg