Page 185 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Cuba

CUBA REGION B Y REGION  183

CENTRAL CUBA – EAST

Sancti Spíritus • Ciego de Ávila • Camagüey • Las Tunas

This area in the heart of the island presents two
different facets. One is colonial, with Spanish
traits that are visible in the architecture and
local customs, best expressed in beautiful Trinidad,
and fascinating, labyrinthine Camagüey. The other aspect is
unspoilt nature, the coastline dotted with cayos (islands), which now
attracts many visitors from abroad.

Trinidad, Camagüey and Sancti Spíritus, broke out in Camagüey in 1616, became
the main cultural centres in this region, increasingly frequent and violent, while
were three of seven cities founded in the competition from Cienfuegos was
16th century by a small group of Spaniards becoming more intense. In the late 19th
led by Diego Velázquez. The 17th and 18th century the major landowners left the
centuries were marked by the threat posed cities and as time went on they gradually
by state-sanctioned pirates and by raids ceded their sugar factories to American
such as that made by Henry Morgan at businessmen, who converted them into one
Camagüey (then Puerto Príncipe) in 1666. large sugar-producing business. Camagüey
At that time Trinidad had political and concentrated on livestock raising, an
military jurisdiction over the whole of important resource in the province, while
central Cuba, where the economy was Trinidad engaged in handi crafts and cigar-
based solely on sugar cane cultivation making. It remained isolated from the rest
and the sale of sugar. The great landowners of Cuba for a long time, since the railway was
resided in luxurious mansions in these not extended to Trinidad until 1919 and the
three cities. road to Cienfuegos and Sancti Spíritus was
In the second half of the 19th century, only laid out in the 1950s. One result of
a period of crisis began with the advent of this isolation, however, is that the historic
new technology, for which there was no centres of Trinidad and Sancti Spíritus
skilled labour. Slave revolts, the first of which have preserved their colonial atmosphere.

Boulevard with brightly-coloured stores in Ciego de Avila
Panoramic view from Topes de Collantes, just north of Trinidad

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