If people leave, if coffee and cocoa crops are lost, if businesses fail or if major initiatives become dust over the years, in Baracoa many blame the «Pelú «, Spanish, who migrated to Cuba in the nineteenth century to whom the inhabitants of the first capital and bishopric of this archipelago awarded an old curse.
It is said that his last words, in the bay of the city, just before boarding the ship that would take him back to his homeland were «in Baracoa there will be many good plans as well as good ideas will be generated, but all of them will crumble, nothing is going to be done. » At present some still believe it.
It is only necessary to walk around the town and talk to the neighbors to notice the fatalistic sentiment and hear someone speaking of the ancient prophecy. It is a strange phenomenon, difficult to understand, almost as if the legend of the Antillean had strongly remained in the battered roots of that area of Cuba where until the first half of the twentieth century there was only one small rural hospital over 230 kilometers away from Santiago de Cuba, which was then the capital of the Cuban eastern.
Today there is in that area a Surgical Hospital, the second most important in Guantanamo, and a health care network with 81 facilities including clinics, rehabilitation centers and emergency services.
Nowadays, a Gravity Aqueduct building with water treatment plant is being constructed, which will eliminate water shortages suffered by inhabitants despite living, paradoxically, in the greatest water reserve of the American island.
As a region, the municipality is part of the Nipe -Sagua–Baracoa mountainous system, area of the largest and most important Biosphere Reserve declared by UNESCO in the Caribbean islands. It contains the most abundant forest of Cuba (with the largest plantations of coconut and cocoa in the country) and the largest reserves of hardwood and precious wood.
Furthermore, tourism in Baracoa grows like foam, there are twelve cultural institutions, it is an area of relevant archaeological findings and there are plenty of historical events:
Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Baracoa was the first village founded by the Spanish in Cuba. In this area there was an Indian chief, Cacique Guamá, and close to the mountains it was burned the Indian Hatuey. The attacks of pirates and corsairs left Baracoa breathtaking legends to tell, and the Haitians settled here, with their technological innovations and their crops, turned it into a major production region.
And yet, many people there still like the history of the shabby, called crazy , with curly uncombed beard, rolled up trousers and bare feet wandering around the town begging , or praying in thanks to a cup of coffee or a meal until he started to curse .
«People threw him stones, they said ugly things, and nobody likes that,» told me an inhabitant. And, in fact, that was the cause of the fury of Pelú, whose myth survived several centuries … and significant changes .
His name was Vicente Rodriguez, a native of Poza, province of La Coruña in Spain, where he was born in 1857. He came to Cuba as most Spaniards in search of a fortune not found. According to Digital Formats here on the island he transformed into a missionary, gave his belongings to the poor and walked aimlessly through the country’s eastern evangelizing.
He arrived in Baracoa in 1893 and returned in 1896. It was on this second trip to the First City when, mistaking him for a beggar and crazy, the inhabitants of the town of Sabana, now belonging to Maisí, threw stones and expelled him from the city .
But the times that gave rise to the legend and the «bad luck» that came later due to the excessive exploitation of the American consortia in the village, is already in the past. Another is the reality of that part of Cuba since 1959, when the Revolution «shook” every corner of the archipelago of the troubles of mysticism and imperialist colonization.
Written by Yisell Rodríguez Milán
Source: Cubasí
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