To the Band of Brothers: January 28, 2022
There is a picture hanging in the administration building that you should all see. It was taken in 1919 and features the Belen Tombola. That’s right, Tombola in 1919! Actually, Tombola is older than that, but I am sure no one took pictures or they have been lost over the years. What’s amazing is that we are still celebrating today a Belen tradition that goes that far back.
At the time the 1919 photo was taken, Belen was a little school in Havana on the corner of San Ignacio and Compostela. It was there that Belen was born in 1854 by order of the queen of Spain and thanks to the Spanish Jesuits who arrived on the island in the 19th century.
The black and white photo captures a Saturday morning in one of the little patios of the school. The place is littered with people dressed in the typical garb of the time. Women are wearing beautiful lace dresses that go down to their ankles and up to their necks. Covering their heads are these large hats with flowers on them. The men are in spiffy suits with high white collars and thin black ties. All of them are carrying what seem like straw fedoras in their hands allowing the cameras to capture their slicked-back hair.
Who would have thought that six years later that place would be shut down and future Tombolas would be celebrated in the patios of the bigger, more beautiful Belen building in the Marianao neighborhood just outside the capital? The place that was to be dubbed “el palacio de la educación” would host Belen Tombolas, until that fateful year in 1961, when one of its own sons would close the whole operation down. How could a guy who rode Ferris Wheels and ate pan con lechón while hanging out with friends in the hallways of that school turn so viciously against it?
But Belen did not go away that easily and neither would Tombola. In Miami, the school emerged on the fourth floor of the Gesu School building and then moved to a warehouse on 8th street and 7th avenue. It was here that eventually Tombola rose from the ashes of “el exilio” and peered its carnivalesque head out of the streets of Little Havana. And, although the neighborhood was not as nice or the building as posh, hundreds of students, parents, and alumni got together to eat, drink, and be merry, while they raised some money for the school’s financial assistance program.
I have a special passion for Tombola. Not only because of the fun I have or because of the opportunity it creates for alumni who haven’t been back for years to come see the school, but because of the fact that throughout the years my brothers and I were students here, we were on financial assistance. Tombola made Belen possible for me. So, if we’re going to continue to educate young men to be Christian leaders in our world, then Tombola must go on. We have to keep eating, drinking, and being merry at Tombola. Que siga la tradición.
The black and white photo captures a Saturday morning in one of the little patios of the school. The place is littered with people dressed in the typical garb of the time. Women are wearing beautiful lace dresses that go down to their ankles and up to their necks. Covering their heads are these large hats with flowers on them. The men are in spiffy suits with high white collars and thin black ties. All of them are carrying what seem like straw fedoras in their hands allowing the cameras to capture their slicked-back hair.
Who would have thought that six years later that place would be shut down and future Tombolas would be celebrated in the patios of the bigger, more beautiful Belen building in the Marianao neighborhood just outside the capital? The place that was to be dubbed “el palacio de la educación” would host Belen Tombolas, until that fateful year in 1961, when one of its own sons would close the whole operation down. How could a guy who rode Ferris Wheels and ate pan con lechón while hanging out with friends in the hallways of that school turn so viciously against it?
But Belen did not go away that easily and neither would Tombola. In Miami, the school emerged on the fourth floor of the Gesu School building and then moved to a warehouse on 8th street and 7th avenue. It was here that eventually Tombola rose from the ashes of “el exilio” and peered its carnivalesque head out of the streets of Little Havana. And, although the neighborhood was not as nice or the building as posh, hundreds of students, parents, and alumni got together to eat, drink, and be merry, while they raised some money for the school’s financial assistance program.
I have a special passion for Tombola. Not only because of the fun I have or because of the opportunity it creates for alumni who haven’t been back for years to come see the school, but because of the fact that throughout the years my brothers and I were students here, we were on financial assistance. Tombola made Belen possible for me. So, if we’re going to continue to educate young men to be Christian leaders in our world, then Tombola must go on. We have to keep eating, drinking, and being merry at Tombola. Que siga la tradición.
Auspice Maria
BELEN JESUIT PREPARATORY SCHOOL
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: communications@belenjesuit.org
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: communications@belenjesuit.org
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba, by Queen Isabel II of Spain. The task of educating students was assigned to the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose teaching tradition is synonymous with academic excellence and spiritual discipline. In 1961, the new political regime of Cuba confiscated the school's property and expelled the Jesuit faculty. The School was re-established in Miami the same year, and over the next decade, continued to grow. Today, Belen Jesuit is situated on a 34-acre site in western Dade County, just minutes away from downtown Miami.