Camaguey

Camaguey is a city located in west-central Cuba, capital of the homonymous province.
It was founded on February 2nd 1514 as a village, called Santa Maria del Puerto del Principe, the third in Cuba.

It has a population of 325,000 inhabitants (2005). The historic city center was named in 2008 a World Heritage Site. The present name was due to a Camaguebax chief, who exercised his command between the rivers and Hatibonico Tinima, where they began to build the first houses. Cradle of figures such as Joaquin de aguero or Ignacio Agramonte, known as “The Mayor”, fought against the Spanish troops, and was the first to give freedom to slaves.

The province, which is the capital, is the country’s largest and one of the lowest populated. There are vast plains that occupy almost the entire territory, Camaguey province has the country’s livestock. It is composed of 13 municipalities: Carlos Manuel de Cespedes; Florida; Nuevitas; Esmeralda; Minas; Sibanicu; Guaimaro Najasa; Jimaguayu; Watershed; Santa Cruz del Sur; Sierra de Cubitas and Camaguey, where the capital city with the same name municipality and province has about 325 thousand inhabitants and is the third largest city in Cuba, after Havana and Santiago de Cuba.

The territory has a diversified economy with strong industrial and agricultural production, focusing its industry in the city of Camaguey, the Nuevitas, Florida and Santa Cruz del Sur. Among the production highlighs are: electric power; cement; fertilizer; chemicals; mechanical production; beer; rum and soft drinks; dairy; sugar and others. There is a strong tradition of cattle and sugarcane.

Population

The city is the third city in Cuba that has more than 300,000 inhabitants distributed over 4 districts: Candido Gonzalez; Ignacio Agramonte; the Joaquin de Aguero and Julio Antonio Mella. It is distinguished by attachment to the territory. It is one of the most stable cities in its population, maintaining a positive net migration.

Great traditions highlight Principe dwellers. They are the high culture, good talk and practice of pure Catholicism and is not mixed with other religions. This is facilitated by its relative geographic isolation and its ancient culture, which started from being a cradle of the first literary work of America, Espejo de Paciencia, written by Silvestre de Balboa.

Poets Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda, Aurelia Castillo, Nicolas Guillen, Fidelio Ponce, Cuba Ballet, Ballet de Camaguey, and several folk dance groups, traditional and modern choruses, theater groups, art galleries and special schools arts education, from elementary to university level created the first university in the country after the triumph of the revolution.

The territory now has 5 universities or higher education institutions and university campuses in the 13 municipalities that have contributed to raising the cultural level of the people. With its stunning squares, streets and churches it is the third largest city in Cuba and has the largest historic center (330 ha). Its museums and temples, which are treasures of funerary art of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, are part of an urban landscape that is hard to match.

The citizens of this region and throughout the country are polite, given to help one another and are particularly vigilant. They are usually more reserved, suspicious and individualistic than in the East of the island and more traditional than in the West (such property, as idiosyncratic generally extends to Sancti Spiritus). The typical Camagueyano East is not considered, nor Las Villas or Spiritus to be conventional.

Because droughts are very heavy at times and covered with a yellow coat the grass of the province and the city, from the time of Spanish colonization began to use the jars, which are enormous balloon-shaped containers made of clay to store rain water for prolonged periods.

For this reason and because these vessels currently can be found adorning streets and parks, Camaguey is called the city of the jars, and there is a legend that says if you drink water from Tinajon you stay to live in Camaguey, or at least you always come back. The camagueyana poet Aurelia Castillo, recalled jars of his childhood in his house in the street where he wrote his famous poem “The Tinajon”.