The Cyclical Destiny of the Golden Buddha

I heard a story about a Golden Buddha making it from China to Cuba. The statue, standing up right, made of pure gold, emerged during the T'ang Dynasty between the 10 and 7th century bc . It survived the first great purge of Buddhism in China in the 9th century BC. Then it just had disappeared, for the first time.

Even before the Spanish kings, vessels traded with the Philippines, which was Asia's trading hub where Cina, Japan, and other Asian merchants had met for centuries and were joined by the Spaniards from the end of the 16th century....Spanish ships brought back invaluable treasures, resting in the Caribbean before moving on to mainland Europe. This is how the Golden Buddha eventually landed in Havana because the Spanish somehow got hold of the statue and sailed on the Manila galleon back to the Carribean at the beginning of the 17th century, via Brazil and Mexico. Normally, at the time, art works were rather melted down to pure gold or silver, but this statue must have impressed the new owners so much that they wanted to present it to the Spanish king in tact.

(Photo: random buddha in Gold)
Again, the Buddha was lucky to survive Spanish inquisition and Counter-Reformation, a time when means of religious display other than Catholic ones were mercilessly persecuted. Apparently, so the history, the Buddha came to Havana in 1631. It disappeared a second time shortly after that from the governor's coffers where things where kept until departure to Spain. Two and a half centuries later, the Golden Buddha came back to life when a Cuban plantage owner intended to smuggle it out the country amidst the War of Independence. For another time it was brought to the acting Spanish Captain General's treasury who had been informed about its re-appearance, and Spain was still the lawful owner. In 1870, the buddha was put on the ship Las Mercedes, heading for Spain. But the ship never made it out of the bay. A storm made it sink and the buddha disappeared for the third time.

Then, as the legend goes, the captain of that ship, Nathaniel Chavarria, must have brought it to Uruguay because he was able to establish a rich cattle ranchat around 1880, the word of which spread all the way to Cuba by a Basque geneologist who knew the Chavarria family. This Nathaniel must have given the buddha to a man called Manuel Riva Fernandez, who showed the buddha in 1902 to friends as a family relict. Shortly after that he was invited to exhibit his treasure at an art exhibition in Paris, which is the way a wider audience got to know of its existence. Eventually, Manuel's daughter Zenaida Riva inherited the buddha, married a banker called Guevara, in whose house it was securely stored until thieves broke in and stole the buddha in 1951. The Golden Buddha had vanished for the fourth time.

In 1962, an old lady of a Cuban bourgeois family who had resided in the Guevara-Riva Villa died and all her possessions were confiscated by the now revolutionary Cuban authorities. Among these items was a valuable desk of French make with secret compartments. In one of these compartments a map was found, pointing to a secret location where the buddha was allegedly buried. But the story seemed so abstruse that nobody followed the trace and the story was forgotten again until 1978. Apparently, a Cuban official being responsible for looking after confiscated bourgois valuables, kept this secret hidden in order to prepare his own escape with it from Cuba. By 1998, the attempt to escape failed and the police who had tracked the secret location following the maps clues, nonetheless, did not succeed in finding the Golden Buddha which had been wrapped in mystery for about 15 centuries by then. Still, the buddha has refused to appear, finally.........