Santiago de Cuba

I begin my journey in Santiago’s most beautiful park, the Parque Céspedes, perched just next to the magnificent Catedral de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. This is one of the most important places in modern Cuban history; it was here, in 1958, that Fidel Castro announced the victory of the Cuban Revolution, dramatically changing, for better or for worse, the life of every Cuban.

But let’s rewind a few hundred years, all the way to the city’s beginnings. Santiago was founded by the conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar in 1515, who named the city after the Spanish patron saint, St.James. This is one of the oldest cities in the country and one of the first Spanish settlements on the island. Santiago is often seen as the challenger to Havana’s status as Cuba’s most important city, and for over 60 years, it was Cuba’s capital, prospering between 1522 and 1589 despite a few devastating raids by the Spanish crown’s rivals, the British and the French. 

But it was in the late 18th Century that the city got much of its character. At this time, the city was one of the central hubs of Spain’s trafficking in human beings. Here, hundreds of thousands of kidnapped Africans were imported and sold as chattel, then put to work harvesting sugarcane in the surrounding plantations, living a miserable and backbreaking life of hard labour among the plant’s knife-sharp leaves. Then, in 1791, after the successful revolution led by enslaved people against their masters in Haiti, large numbers of refugees, predominantly Afro-Caribbean former slaves, arrived in the port of Santiago. The result of this history is that Santiago is now one of the nation’s centres of Afro-Cuban culture.

This ethnic group, encompassing around 10% of Cuba’s population, has endured incredible hardship. Slavery was not abolished on the island until 1886, and even afterwards, Afro-Cubans were treated as second-class citizens, subject to racism, lynchings, and abuse by the large landowners. Then, when the USA occupied the country, the racial segregation laws of the Jim Crow South were imported here, excluding black Cubans from society, from education, and subjecting them to terror from the police and racist gangs.

It wasn’t until after the revolution that the rights of black Cubans began to be respected. The new Cuban government, now comprised of many Afro-Cubans, instituted a wide range of programmes aimed at righting historical wrongs. They were successful in removing much of the racial discrimination in employment, education and housing. The revolution’s new social, education and health programmes led to many Afro-Cubans entering the professional classes as doctors, lawyers and academics for the first time in the country’s history, and gender equality programmes have allowed Afro-Cuban women to live full, independent lives, away from the plantation or the household. 

Even so, it’s still a mixed bag, and outside observers have noted that racist attitudes and discrimination still occur on the island. The Cuban government has officially declared that racism has been eliminated, making it difficult for campaigners to raise racial issues, as in doing so, they would be going against the official party line. This opens them up to legal sanction, loss of funding and in some cases, even imprisonment.

Modern Cuba owes much to its black inhabitants. When, in 1868, the island began its long fight for independence from the Spanish, it was the Afro-Cubans, newly freed by the rebels, who formed the backbone of Cuba’s forces, fighting to give their countrymen the freedom that they had long denied them. Many of the great heroes of Cuba’s long struggle for social justice, independence and freedom have also been Afro-Cubans, including Mariana Grajales, known as the ‘Mother of the Cuban nation’, a mixed-race Cuban who campaigned tirelessly for women’s rights and the abolition of slavery in the 1890s. 

The music, instruments and traditional dances Afro-Cubans brought from West Africa evolved into salsa, rumba, and guaguancó. They are also responsible for much of the island’s cuisine; the island’s famous black beans and rice is of African origin, as is the vibrant Ajacio stew, and the plantains, yams and okra that form the backbone of many Cuban dishes were first grown by enslaved Africans. 

Today, all this momentous history seems far away. Children chase each other around the fountains, mothers walk babies in prams together, and old men play chess. Somewhere in the distance, come the rhythms of a drum, irregular and funky, the blast of the horn. All of this is the music of Cuba’s vibrant, fascinating tapestry and the unique syncretic culture of Santiago de Cuba. 

I have two months break from long Team challenges to be able to work on some shorter distances.  Cuba - the last in the Island series, after Bali and Fiji.  I never expected to "travel" to Cuba, yet here I am and excited to learn more!