Paranormal record / 1612
Nipe Bay, Cuba. Around 1612. Three salt gatherers push a canoe out from Cayo Francés before sunrise. The sea is calm. Out on the water, something white rests on the foam. At first they cannot tell what it is. Closer, it looks like a bird and dry branches. Closer still, the two Indigenous brothers say it looks like a girl. It is a small statue of the Virgin with the Child Jesus in her arms, standing on a plank. Rodrigo de Hoyos reads the large letters aloud. "Yo soy la Virgen de la Caridad." Her cloth garments are not wet. About seventy-five years later, the last witness swore to it.
Eastern Cuba, early seventeenth century. The copper mines of Santiago del Prado, today El Cobre, needed salt to preserve meat, so three people were sent to the salt flats of Nipe Bay. Two were the Indigenous brothers Juan de Hoyos and Rodrigo de Hoyos, and the third was Juan Moreno, an enslaved boy of about 10. Tradition calls them "los tres Juanes." An approaching storm drove them to shelter on Cayo Francés, a cay in the middle of the bay.