A GREAT PLACE THEN AND NOW

Cuba was inhabited long before the Spanish arrived.  Archeological evidence indicates that indigenous people arrived at least 4000 BCE from the Caribbean, Florida and Mississippi.  In fact the name for the island is a Taïno word.  It means "place of abundant fertile land" or "great place."  When the Spanish arrived, the dominant inhabitants were the Tainos who had spread throughout the Caribbean.  Also present were Ciboney and Guanajatabay.  It is estimated that about 350,000 indigenous people lived on the island when the Spanish arrived.  They raised sweet potatoes, yucca, corn, cotton and tobacco.  Harsh treatment as slaves, disease and murder completely eliminated the population.  Today, there are no native peoples in Cuba.

At some time in the distant past, native people entered shallow caves and adorned the walls with pictographs resembling serpents crossed with frogs or caricatures of ET.  The caves themselves are interesting because they rarely descend to great depths and the ceilings are perforated by openings to the sky.  Vines, roots and plants spill from these openings like phantasmagoric waterfalls.

            While  broad flat plains stretch over large areas of Cuba and merge with rolling hills, the island is home to three mountain ranges.  We took a bone-rattling ride in an ancient Russian troop carrier up into the rain forest that cloaks the sides of Sierra del Escambray, Cuba’s second largest range, near Trinidad.

High in the mountains is a region called “Topes de Collante.”  “Topes” means “limit” or “brim” or “top” and Collante is a man’s name so the area is figuratively known as the “Heights of Collante.”

            It is a beautiful area full of trees, flowers and mountain streams that cascade over rocky outcrops into cold mountain pools.

Many of the plants growing there have medicinal uses and are being studied by pharmacologists.  One in particular is a mossy, vine like plant that hangs in streams from tree branches.  A tea made from it lowers blood sugar and is useful in controlling diabetes.

            There are coffee and banana plantations throughout the rainforest.  They are not the manicured groves that you might expect.  Tiny coffee bushes share space with the bananas and naturally occurring plants.

The overall effect is a certain kind of wildness.  Even though the plantations seem untended, keeping the jungle back is a constant job and like so much else in Cuba it’s done by hand and the machete is a farmer’s constant companion.

It is a hard life.  Isolated farmhouses and well tended gardens dot the hillsides.  The coffee beans do not all ripen at the same time.  There are three harvests during the season and the berries are picked one by one by hand.

            Coffee is a major export crop for Cuba.  Like tobacco and certain other crops, 80% of a farmer’s crop belongs to the government.  The remaining 20% belongs to the farmer.  The land upon which it is grown belongs to the farmer as long as he works it and he can pass it on to his heirs.  If he ceases to work the land, ownership reverts to the government which will give it to someone else.

            In many respects, life for the people who wrest a living from the land, like the land itself, has changed little over the years.  Before the revolution, they worked hard, often and mostly manually.  The same can be said today.  They do have health care and they do have education.  But like the mountains themselves, their way of life has endured.