by Raisa Martín Lobo

Guantanamo, the easterner Cuban province is located at more than one thousand kilometers from the capital of the island; it has a landscape that contract with a surrounding of desert areas and mountainous vegetation.

The 99 percent of the territory is covered by mountains and has many areas of stony lands, of scarce vegetation and abundant cactus, which are the contrary of green forests and sugar cane plantations.

Guantanamo has the ecological reservation Hatibonico, of an area of more than 5 thousand hectares, in which are found famous elevations such as the Monitongos, characterized by the endemic flora and fauna.

The National Park Alejandro de Humboldt is located in Guantanamo and part of Holguin. This park has typical and unique landscapes with a vegetation of wet tropical forest; it is the protected area of greater diversity in Cuba and the Caribbean. Humboldt has an area of 70 thousand hectares in the heart of the mountainous group Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa.

Scientific studies show that a hundred species of vegetables are exclusive of the park as well as 64 birds, 12 of them are endemics. Humbolt is also the last refugee of the royal carpenter and the manatee.

Nevertheless the greatest attraction of the province is the village Baracoa, Cuban Prime Villa, founded by Diego Velazquez in 1512. Baracoa is characterized for the kindness of its population and the beauty of its landscape.

Baracoa took its name after an Indian word meaning “sea existence”, in an allusion of the population to the presence of the sea environment everywhere contrasting with the green mountains and the abundant rains.

For the constant attack of pirates and corsairs, the Spanish government created a solid system of defense that includes the forts of La Punta, Seboruco and Matachin as well as the turrets Joa and Caguase.

Baracoa is one of the few regions of the country in which the Indians spread to the mountains and survived in one way or another to the colonization. Such Indians left their trace in the current inhabitants that today carry the characteristics of their ancestors.