The discovery of the image of Our Lady of Charity in Cuba’s Bay of Nipe became the starting point for a much larger devotional history at El Cobre. A central written source is Juan Moreno’s sworn declaration of 1 April 1687. It describes the recovery of a floating image, its reception by a mining community and subsequent events interpreted as miracles. It is valuable testimony, but a recollection given many decades after the discovery rather than a contemporary report from the canoe.
Who gave the testimony
The declaration opens at the mines of Santiago del Prado, before priest Juan Ortiz Montejo de la Cámara and a notary. Moreno is introduced as a married man aged eighty-five, born locally and enslaved. He says he was about ten when he accompanied Rodrigo and Juan de Hoyos to gather salt. The brothers are identified in the record as Indigenous men. These details place the narrative within the lives of a working, racially unequal colonial community, rather than an anonymous encounter outside history.
Moreno’s stated ages imply a discovery roughly seventy-five years before the hearing, conventionally associated with the early seventeenth century. They do not supply a day or month for it. This article keeps the 1687 deposition date separate from the earlier event and does not convert that approximate age calculation into an exact incident-year filter. The record also does not present separate sworn interviews from both Hoyos brothers.
A calm morning in the Bay of Nipe
According to Moreno, the three travellers had camped on Cayo Francés within the bay while waiting for suitable conditions to go to the saltworks. They set out in a canoe before sunrise on a morning when the sea was calm. The calm sea is an important detail in this testimony. A storm and a dramatic rescue of the canoeists should not be inserted into it from a different or later telling.
As they moved away from the cay, they noticed something white on the water. At first they could not distinguish it, then thought it might be a bird. Coming closer, the brothers suggested a girl before recognising an image of the Virgin holding the Christ Child on a small board. Moreno says Rodrigo read an inscription identifying the Virgin of Charity. Their recognition developed as they approached; the testimony does not describe a living woman speaking from the sea.
One feature astonished them: the image’s fabric clothing was reportedly dry despite its position afloat. That detail is the extraordinary claim attached to the recovery. The record does not provide a contemporary examination of the material, a measured exposure to water or independent observations made before the image was lifted aboard. A floating religious object and the interpretation of its dry garments must therefore be assessed separately.
From the bay to Barajagua
Moreno says they collected some salt and returned to Hato de Barajagua, where they told the overseer, Miguel Galán, what they had found. Galán sent Antonio Angola with the news to Captain Francisco Sánchez de Moya, who administered the mines. Meanwhile, the image was placed on a wooden altar with a light. The account gives a chain of named people and practical arrangements through which devotion developed.
Sánchez de Moya then ordered accommodation for the image and sent a copper lamp. A small structure was made with palm-board walls and a thatched roof, and Rodrigo cared for the light. On two occasions, the narrative says, he could not find the image when attending the lamp at night. Others were called and searched, but the image was back on its altar in the morning with wet clothes.
These episodes reverse the condition emphasised at the discovery: the garments were first unexpectedly dry on the water, then reportedly wet after an unexplained absence on land. The testimony presents both as signs of sacred agency. It does not establish continuous surveillance of the altar or demonstrate how the clothing became wet. The named community setting gives the story texture without supplying the missing observations.
The move to the mines and the lights
News of the disappearances led to a procession transferring the image to the parish church at the mines, with a Franciscan identified as Father Bonilla. Moreno could not recall his first name. While a hermitage was being planned, the account describes three lights above the mining ground, in the direction of the springs, on three successive nights. Their appearance was understood as an indication of the desired shrine site.
Those lights belong to a religious interpretation within this testimony. There are no measurements, detailed visual descriptions or separate observation logs that would identify their physical source. They should not be turned into a modern UFO report simply because they were unusual lights. Nor does the choice of a shrine location itself prove the explanation offered for them.
Later stories and different kinds of knowledge
The questioning then turns from the recovery to miracles known at the shrine. Moreno describes a move away from a dangerous position near the mine. One story concerns Matías de Olivera falling when a wooden barrier gave way. He was found holding onto an agave leaf and was pulled out with ropes. His survival was interpreted as the Virgin’s protection. The narrative contains an ordinary physical rescue as well as its devotional meaning; it is not a measured account of levitation.
For further incidents the declaration explicitly introduces information Moreno had heard from Olivera and others. These include an unexpectedly replenished lamp and renewed stories of the image absent from its altar and returning wet. Another account links a procession during drought to sudden heavy rain. Such passages are evidence of beliefs circulating in the community, with a different status from Moreno’s claimed childhood participation in finding the image.
The distinction is made by the document itself and should survive a modern retelling. It is also important that the declaration’s devotional language about remedies is not medical evidence or advice. No clinical records or controlled investigation accompany those assertions. This reference concerns a historical religious narrative, not the effectiveness of a treatment.
What the written record can establish
At its close, the declaration says the text was read back word for word and Moreno affirmed it. He did not sign because he said he could not write; the minister and notary supplied the written authentication. It is consequently inaccurate to describe the surviving narrative as Moreno’s autograph diary. The question-and-answer setting, the long interval and the mixture of participation and hearsay are all part of the source.
The outcome is insufficient evidence for the supernatural events. The testimony preserves a detailed early account of the image’s discovery and of the community’s developing devotion, but it does not independently verify the dry garments, disappearances or miraculous causation. That assessment does not dismiss the cultural or religious importance of Our Lady of Charity, and it does not claim a demonstrated fraud or a proven ordinary explanation for every episode.
Location and sources
The map marks an approximate Bay of Nipe area reference in Holguín, from GeoNames 3545984, rounded to 0.01°. It is not the exact recovery point, an identification of the historic Cayo Francés landing place or the basilica at El Cobre. The photographed basilica illustrates the later devotional setting elsewhere in eastern Cuba. The bay reference is not a visitor venue or permission to enter land or travel on the water.
The seventeenth-century declaration was read in the transcription in Palabra Nueva, September 1996, printed pages 10–11 (PDF pages 9–10), and compared with a later full transcription. These publications identify an Archivo de Indias source; this review has not independently audited the original manuscript or its complete archival transmission. The underlying historical text is distinct from the magazine’s modern commentary and photographs.
The Archdiocese of Santiago de Cuba’s November 2026 basilica broadcast provides current devotional context, rather than proof of the early miracles or a visitor-hours guarantee. For another separately sourced Marian narrative, see the spiritual cases in the Cases directory.