January 1528: rebirth of the Camagüey

Park Agramonte, old bigger Square and fundational site of the definitive establishment of the current Camagüey.

By:José M. Fontela

January 6, 1528 brought us free to the village of Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe. That day would be the term of a trip that had for starting point to a non specified place with accuracy, and of which takes like reference to Tip of Guincho, located in the coast in the Bay of Nuevitas.

During every year the oral story has sustained that the foundation date corresponds at February 2, 1514 and, as good lovers of the tradition and turned to the polemic among historians—some of which locate the fact between ends of June and principles of July 1515—, the villagers have celebrated the previous date as the birth of its city.

Less polemic has been the reference on January 6, when, “being planted a big cross in the vicinity of the two rivers that skirt the place, the square was delineated and were built the consistorial house, the parish, the government's holding and the house of Basque Porcayo of Figueroa, very bound character to the history of the central region of the country”, like aims the doctor Lourdes Gómez in the book “Camagüey: city and architecture (1514-1950).”

Less polemic and—this modest editor would say—a so much minimized the one referred review as for the cult that deserves, being that the date in that the process of definitive crystallization of the current Camagüey begins, having as matters cousins the efforts, expectations and aspirations incubated by those conquerors of a new world in little more than a dozen of previous years.

The transfer of the village inland, fair to the center of one of the widest regions in the country and, therefore, more far from the benefits of the sea, was qualified as a “accomplished error”, by Antonio Bachiller and Morales.

The certain thing is that already in 1516 the previous penetration of some 22 leagues had taken place, more toward the west than toward the south, and,as result, still with certain proximity to the coast. Those 12 years of life and (auto)recognition in that second establishment, maybe was not enough to opt for the correction or the establishment of the “error”, according to the Cuban sage of the XIX century estimate?

The search in a characteristic way of subsistence and existence or, said otherwise, of a material and spiritual identity, without doubts, motivated to our old village to go into even more, when objective causes determined the departure of the residents of Caonao.

What some also call “absurdity”, was generating intense of senses and, mainly, of one of the most essential of the human life: that of ownership.

Fertile lands and cattle raising, with it rising cultural reflection of austerity and hefty men; traffic area among western villages and of the east, and the consequent bloom of a hospitality always attentive for the pilgrim; mediterranean district, willing to constantly look at himself and to look for references in itself; aware of it difference for own determination and therefore, proud of yes and of its destination.

Everything January 6 are still time for the balance of what we have been and fact, and for the analysis of what we seek to be and to make for the year that newly begins. Between the riversides of the Tínima and the Hatibonico, reborned a process that, in that same way, has conjugated year after year a past, present and future of cultural idiosyncrasy ofCamagüey.Better gift could not bring us that day of 1528.