El Capitolio

The tall dome rises above El Capitolio's main hall, and two wings extend from it in different directions. The building was conceived for two chambers of parliament: lawmakers left from here for their own parts of the palace. After a long break, parliament is working in these halls again.

Beneath the center of the dome, in the floor of the Hall of Lost Steps, lies an eight-pointed star with a diamond. This tiny point was linked to two enormous construction projects of the late nineteen twenties. President Gerardo Machado commissioned El Capitolio for the Senate and the House of Representatives, while at the same time building the Central Highway across the entire island. Secretary of Public Works Carlos Miguel de Céspedes acquired a diamond weighing about twenty-five carats and ordered it placed beneath the dome. The stone became the zero kilometer of Cuban roads.

On May twentieth, nineteen twenty-nine, El Capitolio opened as a palace of laws. Senators and representatives left the central hall for two wings, while the national road network began in the floor between them.

On the morning of March twenty-fifth, nineteen forty-six, a Cuban Congress police officer found an empty setting in the star. The day before, an art exhibition had ended in the hall, admitting large numbers of visitors. Investigators supposed that the thieves had waited until closing time, hiding behind paintings. They smashed the thick protective glass and chiseled the diamond out of its setting. Nearby, they left used matches, a bloodstained hat lining, and a penciled note: quarter to three to quarter past three, twenty-four carats. If the time was recorded correctly, the work took half an hour.

The chairman of the Senate, Miguel Suárez Fernández, who was responsible for order in the building, suspended the night guards without pay and demanded that the thieves be found. Two guards were arrested. One admitted that he had been at home during his shift; the other had been asleep in an elevator. The investigation considered police officers, officials, and professional thieves, but could not prove anyone's guilt.

Fifteen months later, Cuban President Ramón Grau San Martín summoned cabinet ministers, senators, and the judge handling the case to his office. A battered yellow envelope lay on the president's desk. Grau took the diamond from it and stated that he had received the stone anonymously. He handed the find to the judge, but did not explain who had managed to carry it into the Presidential Palace. Later, the names of police officers and government intermediaries were mentioned, but no version was proven. The thieves escaped trial, and the suspended guards paid for the disappearance of someone else's diamond.

The stone was returned to the star. In nineteen seventy-three, it was nevertheless removed to a bank vault, and a copy was placed in the floor. Today, the Cuban parliament meets again in El Capitolio, and the country's zero kilometer still lies beneath its dome. Only the diamond from which distances are measured is no longer the one that was once carried out of here through guarded doors.