Una Obra maestra: El acueducto Albear de La Habana (review)

This is a comprehensive study of one of Havana's greatest public works, the Albear aqueduct, and its namesake, the aqueduct's chief engineer and designer, Francisco de Albear y Fernández de Lara. Built between 1858 and 1893, the aqueduct alleviated a chronic shortage of potable water that had plagued the city of Havana since its establishment in 1519. Over the centuries, colonial administrators had experimented with various ways of supplying Havana with water, from transportation in casks from sources along Cuba's northern coast, to an open, wood-lined canal, and finally to an ill-conceived iron pipeline which brought water from the Almendares River. The water supply project Albear designed and built supplied the city with water from an abundant fluvial source not far from the city, the Vento springs.

Albear faced several technical challenges. Principal among them was capturing water from the hundreds of springs prone to contamination by periodic flooding from the nearby Almendares River. In addition, the river lay between the springs and the growing city of Havana, and so the design necessitated siphons to transport the spring water underneath the riverbed. The water then flowed by gravity throughout the waterworks, which consisted of enclosed concrete tunnels and reservoirs feeding a redundant network of iron pipes. Albear's technological success—the aqueduct still supplies between 15 and 19 percent of Havana's water—was rewarded with a gold medal for engineering at the 1878 Universal Exposition in Paris.

Under the editorial direction of Rolando García Blanco, three of Una obra maestra's authors contribute historical chapters, with Pérez Monteagudo, a hydraulic engineer, giving a detailed technical study and assessment ( valoración) of Albear's engineering proposals. The first chapter documents Havana's centuries-long efforts to procure a reliable and clean water supply. Construction of the aqueduct spanned a difficult period of history, during which Cubans fought their first war of independence against Spain (1868-78) and suffered from the political and financial setbacks of the gasping Spanish empire. The focus then shifts to a biographical study of Albear. Cuban-born, Albear studied engineering as a cadet in Spain and served all his life in the Spanish army. Although he rose to the rank of brigadier, he never participated in military actions against his fellow Cubans.

The project's genesis and construction are meticulously documented on the basis of Albear's design proposals, reports, and memoranda as chief of public works, documents which are preserved at the Archivo Historico Nacional in Madrid. These reveal an engineer abreast of the latest hydraulic engineering techniques, sensitive to cost-benefit analysis, and with a tenacity and commitment to the project that the authors depict as nothing short of heroic and worthy of being emulated by present-day Cuban engineers in the face of the island's economic difficulties. Work on the aqueduct was often stopped by lack of funding, manpower shortages, and interminable reviews and reconsiderations by Spanish authorities, both at home and in Madrid. The contract for the aqueduct's completion was eventually awarded to the American engineering firm of Runkle, Smith and Company. Through it all, Albear showed remarkable resilience, finally persevering by adapting the project's design and construction schedule to the changing economic and political situation of the colony.

Unfortunately, the contributors force an interesting and even inspiring account of engineering achievement into the deterministic periodization that is de rigueur among Marxist Cuban historians. This periodization classifies the nineteenth century as a period marked by the shift of Cuban economic dependence from Spain to the United States, a shift which, according to this interpretation, condemned the island to economic underdevelop-ment and laid the seeds of social struggle that led—inevitably—to the 1959 revolution. Thus, Una obra maestrapresents what could have been a rich story of technological development in a colonial environment as simply another episode in a long saga of exploitation...