In Cuba, there’s a phrase called “voló como Matías Pérez,” which means “flew away like Matías Pérez.”
It’s not a positive phrase — it refers to someone you know disappearing, never to be seen again.
To understand the phrase, you have to understand what happened to the aeronaut who inspired the phrase, who went on to hold a significant place in Cuban folklore.
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Many think Matías Pérez is the man on the left in the picture above. He was born in Portugal and eventually immigrated to Cuba, making a profit as a tailor. He built awnings and made a lot of money by doing so, and was recognized as “rey de los toldos,” or “the king of awnings.”
However, Pérez, like many of us, was a man of grand dreams and aspirations.
He wanted to fly, in a time before airplanes and spaceships ever existed.
According to Alina Gomez at Cuba Plus Magazine, Matías Pérez flew into the air with a hot air balloon in 1856. He flew three times that year. The first two times, conditions were good and he successfully took flight.
The third time he flew into the air, the conditions were not good. There was a strong gust and poor visibility, but Pérez took flight anyway. He flew higher and higher until he could not be seen anymore.
To this day, there have been no signs of the hot air balloon or Pérez himself.
Hot air balloons before Matías Pérez
According to D.C. Corbitt in a 1941 edition of Hispania, Pérez wasn’t the first Cuban to fly a hot air balloon.
In Cuba, a Frenchman by the name of Eugenio Robertson was the first to fly in a hot air balloon, in a heavily publicized event that had Cuban law enforcement look out for Robertson’s safety in case he landed at sea. It was a successful venture into the air — Robertson landed safely 30 miles south of Havana.
Corbitt says Robertson inspired a whole generation of Cuban youth to be interested in flying hot air balloons. Robertson put a page and a half ad in the newspaper to tout his accomplishment since many journalists and authors did not do the same.
In 1831, a Cuban man named Don Domingo Blinó made a trip with a hot air balloon. While law enforcement did not take the same precautions for safety as they did for Robertson, Blinó looked out for his own safety. He offered a lot of gold to whoever would rescue him in case the hot air balloon went out to sea.
Blinó wasn’t seen in two days. The public worried about his fate. However, he landed two days later on a horse farm near Havana.
The media saw Blinó as a hero. Every single newspaper in Havana dedicated itself to his accomplishments. Many newspapers published poetry about Blinó’s accomplishment.
Next, there was another Frenchman by the name of Morat, who offered people trips on a hot air balloon to see the Crimea War in early 1856. As you can imagine, it was impossible to travel by hot air balloon from Cuba to Crimea at the time, and the advertisement ended up scamming its buyers.
Morat had another French friend, Eugene Godard. Godard is remembered today as a famous French aeronaut. Godard and Morat took passengers on their hot air balloon, telling people they could “see the beautiful city of Havana from the air.” But it was not a profitable venture.
But Godard was training one man to become a balloonist: Matías Pérez. Godard eventually sold his famous “Ville de Paris” balloon for 1,200 pesos.
The first two trips of Matías Pérez
Soon, according to D.C. Corbitt, Pérez surpassed his mentor. He would speak of Godard with tremendous honor, calling himself a “faithful disciple” who was merely “imitating [Godard’s] fearlessness and courage.”
Pérez had his first publicized trip on June 12, 1856. He took his first ascent on his hot air balloon, taking a group of Cuban businessmen with him. It was a major success — Pérez landed only five miles away from Havana.
10 days later, Pérez announced a second flight. Through a poem he targeted the audience of “jóvenes hermosas” and “las virgenes de Cuba.” These Spanish phrases translate to “beautiful young women” and “the virgins of Cuba.”
You can say it was a very different audience than his first trip.
Cuban tradition dictates that Pérez was a married man, and Corbitt speculates he most likely did not want to face his wife between the time of the poem’s publication and the trip, given the tone of the poem.
But the second trip was a smashing success. Corbitt, whether in jest or reiterating popular legend, says the following:
Matías Pérez’s last trip
Pérez made one last trip on June 29, 1856.
The weather was warm, but it was a windy day, and the visibility was poor.
He decided to fly anyway at 7 p.m., and his balloon ascended 2,000 meters before it was never seen again. The balloon was seen heading north, past Havana and over the Atlantic Ocean. At a tower called la Chorrera, several fishermen said they saw him and told him to get down, but Pérez did not hear them.
That was the last time he was ever seen.
One Spanish general, José Gutiérrez de la Concha, searched for the balloon and Pérez and the hot air balloon all over Cuba, but no trace was ever found.
Historical researcher Tatiana Guerra Hernández says rumors circulated around Havana about Pérez’s fate. Some said he was struck by lightning. Some said he was killed by sharks. Some said he was abducted by a hostile American Indian tribe in the Caribbean, and some said he killed himself for love.
Legacy
Besides inspiring a term used to refer to missing persons, Matías Pérez would not be the last person to disappear or die in hot air balloons.
In recent history, some adventurers have circumnavigated the world through hot air balloons. In 1999, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones flew around the world by balloon, without stopping and without refueling. They received $1 million from Anheuser-Busch.
In 2002, adventurer Steve Fossett was the first person to circumnavigate the world alone by hot air balloon. Fossett would also accomplish other feats, like being the first solo pilot to fly around the world by himself, without refueling. In 2007, Fossett went on a flight and never came back, being declared legally dead a year later.
Matías Pérez cemented himself in Cuban imagination and folklore. Playwright Don Joaquín Robreño once wrote a comic play about Pérez’s shocking disappearance. Postcards a century later commemorated his memory. One Cuban cartoonist made a comic about Pérez flying into space and getting abducted by aliens.
The fact remains Pérez had dreams of flying, and flying high, which he inevitably did. In all likelihood, he probably shipwrecked somewhere in the ocean, and in 1856, authorities did not have the same means to search for him, as they do today.
Matías Pérez was an adventurer who captured the imagination of a nation, even over 150 years after he disappeared.
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This post was previously published on Frame of Reference.
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