To 495 years of it foundation: Camagüey Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity

By Yanais Vega Bacallao

To 495 years of the foundation of the Village of Santa María del puerto del Príncipe, people of Camagüey will receive with pride, this February two, the official declaration, of an area of the Historical Center as Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity.

Also known as city of the earthenjar receives the deserved distinction in honor to its intertwined streets, its squares, facades, lathed wooden grills, its Main Theater and why not, its town.

This proclamation that the UNESCO grants is also a desert homage to the cacique Camagüebax, to who the city owes its current name.

Seated in our days among the rivers Tínima and Hatibonico, in the same heart of the bigger than the Antilles is one of the oldest demarcations in the country.

It was founded on February 2, 1514, in Tip of the Güincho, in the northern Bay of Nuevitas, but due to the conditions of the land don't propitiate to the agriculture and the shortage of water the inhabitants were forced to look for a more appropriate place.

In 1516 ,the village is established in the cacicazgo of Caonao, on the seashore of the river of the same name. Already for January 6, 1528, before a rebellion of Indians, it was settled down definitively in the current place.

For the defense and conservation of Historical and Cultural Patrimony, Camagüey conforms the fifth center historical Cuban included inside the category of Patrimony and it has been denominated specifically as: “ Historical Urban Center", Patrimony of the Humanity.”

Writers and artists, of yesterday and of today, form the list of those that made Camagüey rename. From soft and delicate gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda`s feather , until the quarter note and burning poetry of Nicolás Guillén that more than to index to this colonial village, have honored whole Cuba.