Cuba’s Trinidad
Chronicles of yesteryear report that Spanish conquistador Diego Velazquez was looking for a quiet and lovely place to enjoy the 1513 Holiday Season on this island of dreams called Cuba.
He'd already founded the villages of Asuncion of Baracoa and San Salvador de Bayamo on the eastern side of the country. Yet the lavishness of that wild vegetation so full of surprises prompted him to scour the rest of the island and eventually settle down in the south central portion, just by the Guaurabo River.
That was a location where he could rely on the aboriginal workforce to make the fertile lands yield much better fruits, let alone the possibility of having three well-protected seaports in the vicinity from where to unload supplies and launch out expeditions.
Before so many possibilities and attractions, Don Diego Velazquez made up his mind and founded the Village of the Holy Trinity in January 1514, exactly 490 years ago. Nearly five centuries later, Trinidad is recognized as a Cultural Heritage of Mankind, a high distinction granted by UNESCO.
Museum City of the Caribbean Even though time has ticked by relentlessly through all these centuries, the city of Trinidad still boasts the grandeur that made it the precious gem of central Cuba and one of the most thriving villages of the 19th century.
In the so-called Museum City of the Caribbean, every architectural element and every street cobblestone is well taken care of in an effort to make the town look as genuine as it was during the colonial rule.
This legitimate place where time seems to be standing still (for the better rather than for the worse) gets the credits for being an example of cultural heritage, not only from an architectural standpoint, but also from a traditional and autochthonous point of view.
Those who visit Trinidad get dazzled by the manual skills of weavers and embroiderers. Artisans that turn gunny, palm leaves and guaniquiqui –vegetable fibers that are commonplace in the region- into purses, handbags and hats really sweep tourists off their feet as their cameras keep clicking time and again, capturing one colonial postcard after another.
The cobblestone-paved and sometime narrow streets are swarmed over by these men and women who offer countless souvenirs and keepsakes made of clay and wood, most of them showing off distinctive elements of the local culture and history.
One of the things tourists love the most about Trinidad is sustainability, the fact that the town actually looks like a living museum that goes hand in hand in perfect harmony with the daily life of its residents.
Behind house gates that resemble lace filigrees, families go on with their everyday chores as they faithfully watch out for the city's preservation. From windows that are usually wide open, these friendly and hospitable people welcome visitors and belt out their traditional Trinitarian tunes when the night closes in.
Both in lodging facilities and in many homes offering tourists bed and breakfast, execs and proprietors go the extra mile to keep the exquisiteness of the Cuban cuisine intact, in which pork meat, rice, black beans, seasoned cassava and salad are washed down with schooners of icy suds.
All of Trinidad invites trippers to take a grand tour, starting out from Main Square –built by the Spaniards when they founded the city and still flashing the same beauty and elegance of the 16th century. The plaza and its benches bring back memories of a time when street peddlers and fruit vendors used to hawk their items out loud, while female slaves escorted well-heeled senoritas during their morning and afternoon strolls.
The royal palm, Cuba's national tree, provides a refreshing shadow that everyone appreciates as it spruces up this human settlement where colonial mansions of peculiar architectural elements, neoclassical ornamentation, murals, huge doorframes, wooden jambs and lovely wrought-iron gates were built long before anyone can now remember.
The Brunet Palace is a good case in point of what this magnificent splendor is actually like. Standing on one of the main square corners, the mansion now houses the Romantic Museum, a facility that has undergone some revamping through the years, yet it still preserves many of the original features that brought it to life in 1808.
The Major Parish and other small palaces treasuring museum-like pieces and artifacts round up the surroundings.
As far as popular culture is concerned, the city is home to over thirty festivals, including the Trinitarian Carnival or the San Juan Festivity, in which charangas, the Spanish performing arts and the black folksy theater are the name of the game. The Ribbon Dance –originally performed around a tree, but it spilled onto the streets under the moniker of El Cocuye Dancing Parade as time rolled on- is worth a long look.
The Royal Congo Town Hall, a clear-cut expression of African roots, came to stay in this region as a result of the need for strong and healthy workforce that Spaniards brought from the black continent onto the sugarcane fields.
This blend of elements makes Trinidad a landmark trapped between the mountains and the sea, a place that a good deal of experts believe is the best-preserved village of the Americas.
As a matter of fact, this is a hard-to-forget town for those eager to take a firsthand look at ancient architecture, legends and traditions, the very cultural roots of a nation born out of the mixture of different races.
This is also a one-of-a-kind travel destination for ecotourists. The Topes de Collantes Grand Nature Park, standing just 13 miles from the city and packed with ecological trails, birdwatching sites, spectacular waterfalls and other allures, will play host to this year's TURNAT event.
The Valley of Mills The village's apex was basically owed to the development of the sugar industry, a condition that made several dozen mills spring up in the vicinity of the Valley of San Luis, a breathtaking mountain-hedged spot by the Agabama River. Hand in hand with the advance of the sugar industry, many families made a killing and played a major role in a number of economic and social shakeups that came to pass later on.
Former chronicler Ramon de la Sagra once wrote, “The entire Trinidad Valley belongs to a handful of estate owners that has carpeted the whole area with sugar mills and stock breeding grounds, leaving almost no land at all for other minor crops on the premises.”
The same reporter noted down as early as 1860 that the lands near the Valley of Mills had already lost the necessary fertility for the growing of sugarcane.
This unhelpful condition, coupled with the development of seaports in the near town of Cienfuegos that were fully open to free trade, snatched Trinidad from its privileged stance. Former sugar mills began to fade out and the vast fields narrowed down to simple one-mill colonies.
Times has ticked by since then, yet the legend of the Valley of Mills, plus a bunch of mansions, plantations, getaways and workhouses are still standing taller than ever before.
Visitors can still feast eyes on an old remnant of Trinidad's glory days: the graceful belfry resting atop the dome of the Manacas-Iznaga Sugar Mill, declared a National Monument.
The former Bella Vista Sugar Mill, built in the 1840s by tycoon Don Pedro Malibran under the purest Roman style, is another major standout.
And don't miss out on the chance of dropping by the Cuban-style Guaimaro Mill, one of the sugar-making giants of the times. The dregs of the Manacas-Iznaga living quarters feature the huts of an ancient slave hamlet, considered one of the largest cloisters of its kind until 1857.
The motley vegetation of the Valley of Mills casts its magic spell all over these relics that still spin quite a good yarn about this exciting episode of Cuba's history.
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