Walking to Guaracabulla; the Geographic Center of Cuba
The date associated with the Triunfo de la Revolución, the Triumph of the Revolution, is January 1, 1959. Many people imagine the bearded rebels marching into Havana on New Year’s Day, welcomed by the jubilant throngs. The date and the triumph, however, have more to do with events that took place along these cane fields and guardarayas on New Year’s Eve, 1958. Che Guevara and his troops overwhelmed the forces of Batista in Santa Clara, the city about thirty kilometers to the west of Placetas. Che took Placetas on December 22, 1958 and Remedios on Christmas Day, 1958. He regrouped in Placetas and asked his cartographer to find a route to Santa Clara “por dentero,” not on the main roads leading to the city. It is certain that his route crossed the path that we blazed today. His troops moved in the direction of Sabana, a small town north west of Placetas. If he took no main road to get to Sabana, his guerrilleros could not avoid tramping along the same cane fields, crossing the same railroad lines and seeing the same palm trees that my two friends and I encountered today. It is easy to imagine their rifled trudging through these back roads, cheered on by the parents of our direction givers today. The old lady who served us good lemonade and bad information was a child then. Maybe she watched open mouthed as Che went by, hopeful or fearful of what lay ahead.
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The van takes us to the center of Placetas. The Casa de Cultura stands across from the shady park that offered a particularly inviting welcome to the town. It seems like an enjoyable place to lay in the shade and spend some time after a long day walking. This would be a good layover for walkers tired of small towns. Placetas is not a metropole but with 72,000 people, it can sustain a more diverse social life than the small towns so far encountered on the route. With several private and state-run restaurants, a hotel or two, and neighborhoods to explore, it makes for a good lay-over town.
It is known as La Villa de los Laureles for the various laurel trees throughout the city. Its origins date back to the Ten Years War (1868-1878) when it was founded as a fortified town by people fleeing Guaracabulla, but it existed since the first half of the 19th Century as a stop along the Camino Real between Remedios and Santi Spiritus. The little hamlet at the crossroads where I met my Placetas hosts, El Copey, was actually the first settlement in the area dating around 1671 when a priest from Remedios built a church there thinking that the population might want to settle further inland, away from the perilous pirate-infected northern coast. Placetas developed as a serious settlement with the building of a Spanish fort during the Ten Years War (1868-1878) by a Cornel Jose Martinez Fortun, who became one of the large landowners of the region (maybe he was the graffiti writer at the cave of the Visitantes). For a walker, the town has enough history and contemporary infrastructure to offer a nice stop on the Camino.But we had a schedule to keep. People sat waiting for us, probably since dawn, in Guaracabulla.
Drying off the sweat in the air-conditioned Cultura offices of the promotora, I pull some sunblock out of my hip pack and promptly squeeze its contents out of the rear of the tube, splattering a thick, gooey carpet of paste ten feet long, landing just shy of the promotora’s sandals. She looks at the goop on the floor, and without cracking a smile says, “Time for lunch. Leave it.”
After lunch, at a restaurant right next to the Casa de Cultura, our handlers take us back to El Copey, where we continue through the back roads to Guaracabulla. I again have an embarrassment of guides; a total of five, with the three that we picked up in Placetas. The Placetas leader wore a straw cowboy hat and camouflage shorts. He served in the army, in Angola during times of peace, and looked much younger than the forty-nine he reported to be. He exudes calmness. We speak of relatives he had abroad. Cousins. They do not send money, but they bring it and other things when they come to visit.
“It’s always good to have them back here,” he says. “We’re grateful for what they bring but just glad that they come back.”
Another guide is a rockero, known in Placetas as one of the early pioneers of hard rock in the region. He and the Angola vet had traveled to the Rolling Stones concert in Havana on Friday.
“You would not believe the sound quality,” the vet tells me. “They were playing and we could still have a conversation. No noise. Pure music.”
It sounded like the foundation of a solid urban legend but I just nod in approval.
I do not talk much with the third Placetas guide but at one of our rest stops the topic of the internet comes up. He studied IT at the University of Santa Clara.
“The government is afraid of it. They’re old. They don’t really know what it is and think people will use it to plot against them.” He shakes his head, “they don’t know what it is.”
“It is nothing to be feared,” I say. “In fact, it might kill all desire for social change. It will dumb down the population, if the U.S. experience is any indication.”
He laughs, “Con acceso al internet, un 95% de las personas van a pasar su tiempo comiendo mierda buscando photos del culo de las Kardashians.”
I laugh but felt a pang of sadness that this young Cuban can joke so effortlessly about the decadent phenomena of the Kardashians.
By midafternoon, with the sun bearing down with the patience and calmness of hell, we are still walking. The countryside is hypnotic in its beauty. The stillness is audible. A steady high pitched other worldly sound that surrounds with no beginning or end. The path, golden, brown, dirty, flowing between the greenest fields I have ever seen, is hilly without being exhausting. The cane is gone and now we see large fields of vegetables and tobacco, stretching towards the profile of the Escambray facing up against the southern sky. And of course, the ubiquitous royal palms marking the skyline like green fireworks frozen in time. Maykel and I talk about the special beauty of the palms. They are everywhere and always surprising. Some display their fronds like feathers sprouting from the head of the branchless trunk. The most enigmatic have frons combed to the side, like hair. Maykel says, “Yes. Las palmas peinadas de Sagua are like that. Windblown from the constant ocean breeze.” The palms with the wind combed fronds.
Time becomes space walking in this kind of paisaje and the heat works to give it substance. The heat is a companion, just like the guides. No single step is beyond enduring, I remind myself, looking at my shadow shifting in front of me from left to right, slowly, as I serve as a sundial in the meandering path. “Boredom,” said Heidegger, “is the awareness of time passing.” In long distance walking, time does not pass, really. It keeps up. Attains your pace and no more. While walking, time becomes slowly distended, like honey. Time is a companion, not a competitor as it is in the daily routine which we call our normal lives. I talk to the guides about their relatives out of Cuba. “I will never emigrate,” says my vet. “Too much work put into this place to leave now. Too much sweat and blood. Cuba is a beautiful project. It hasn’t all turned out as we wanted but we all have worked to make our world here. If I ever go to visit my cousins, I’ll come back.”
Hearing the discussion, the rocker chimes in.
“I might emigrate,” he says. “Maybe.” He shrugs. “But things are getting better now. A better economy is all we need to make life easier. We’ll see if it keeps on going.”
In the distance, on a subtle hill, white roofs shine from between the green palms and oak trees.
“I think that’s Guaracabulla,” says Carlos Alejandro.
As it often happens, the segue between countryside and town occurs seamlessly. We round a corner of an open field and small, wood slat houses appeared. First a few with large yards, abundant fruit trees. Then two placed more closely together. Then, further down, the path abruptly turns into a street. A long white building with a green design on the walls hugging the right sidewalk identifies itself as the tienda and market of the town. Bicycles and their riders stand out front. People with containers walking in empty and out full. Folks turn and look as we walk by.
“This is la Ruta Remediana,” says Maykel. “Without intending to, we had covered the route that the settlers of central Cuba had taken from Remedios over four hundred years ago. La ruta de los remedianos to establish Guaracabulla.” Before it was recognized as the geographic center of Cuba, the folks from Remedios settled it as an experimental outpost to see if the entire population of the town could be moved away from the coast. It used to be more important than Placetas. But when Placetas started growing at the turn of the 20th Century, folks left Guaracabulla. “The way you see it now, is the way it’s been for a hundred years, or so,” Maykel continues as we approach the town.
The town gets its name, according to some, from the river that runs through it (although I saw no such river) and dates to 1743 as a simple settlement of those Remedianos moving south. In 1842 it gained the rank of “aldea,” or village and upgraded to town (pueblo) in 1847 with the full name of San Atanacio de Guaracabulla. Like other small towns in the region, it found itself in the way of warring factions during the time of Esteban. When Esteban turned nine years old (1869) Guaracabulla was burned to the grown by Cuban revolutionary forces during the Ten Year’s War (1868-1878), the first national rebellion again Spanish rule of the island. Most of the inhabitants tried to stay alive by moving east and retrenching in the area that would become the town of Placetas. The town that we walked into has remained unchanged for over a hundred years inhabited by fewer than 2,000 souls.
The Ceiba tree is our first stop. There, at the geographic center of Cuba, stands a fenced-in Ceiba tree marking the spot—its wide branches lush, ancient and embracing. All alone in the center of a sun-drenched plaza, it exudes calmness and some ancient wisdom that I usually feel in the presence of ancient sequoias and pristine forests. Here in Guaracabulla, one tree holds court every day welcoming and blessing each comer in its quiet way. To have the tree so sacred to so many Cubans mark the center of the island, the heart of the island, that is something. The species has a mythological tradition in Cuba and Latin America. The Mayas and Aztecs considered the tree holy. Cortez spat on the Aztec tradition as only a Conquistador could by ordering the hanging of the emperor Cuahtemoc from a Ceiba tree. Centuries later, in 1898, a different kind of Conquistadores, the United States, accepted the Spanish surrender in Cuba under a Ceiba tree in Santiago de Cuba.
The ceiba holds a special place in Afro-Cuban religions. It is the resting place of the ancestors. It is the home of orishas and saints. It is the focus of offerings and rituals. In so many ways it represents the core of Cuba and its culture. I direct my reverence at the massive trunk before taking some pictures with my posse of guides.
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