Camaguey is in the middle of the island and capital to the Province of the same name. It is mostly flat with long periods of little rainfall making it somewhat like a Caribbean Kansas/Nebraska. And like those states agricultural with considerable cattle raising activity--- although both are stunted versions of their true potrntial due to the economic paralysis bequeathed to the Cuban prople from fifty-years of Communism/Socialism hardened by the American trade/financial embargo. Hundreds of thousands, millions ....have grown, grayed and died living in this surreal limbo. When the corn and cattle grower in Nebraska has more pull in the American Senate than the first-wave of Cuban exiles from South Florida have ......things will finally change. This is where they will come to expand their operations.
Camaguey has a long history going back to the earliest colonial days... created to be as far inland as possible from marauding 'Pirates of the Caribbean" ...since they could not expect military protection from the far-away capitals of Santiago de Cuba and then La Habana. The unusual sinuous trace of the streets was suppossed to deter raiders from the coast, making their pillaging rampages less convenient.
Center of the city, like so many cities on the island, going thru some very well-done restaurations with an eye to tourism but also to uplift civic pride. Over-priced and under-occupied boutique hotels are surrounded by dozens of home-stay "casas" doing a roaring business.
This is where Carlos Finlay determined that yellow fever was a disease transmitted by mosquitos. Something American Army officers ( e.g. Walter Reed) --- still in Cuba for some years after the 1898 War --- picked up on and later apllied to Panama...allowing for the construction of the Canal with a much minimized loss of life....compared to what the French had to endure a generation earlier......ignorantly fresh from their disease-free experience in Egypt.
Because of its flat terrain there are few rivers in Camaguey. That and few functioning water-wells led the locals to collect and store whatever rainwater did fall in large terra cotta jars ...."tinajas"... just as in Panama. What Finlay found out, and later Reed confirmed, was that unattended ranwater in such "tinajas" was the perfect environment for the health and well-being of mosquitos, the yellow-fever "vector".
Horse-drawn "mini-buses" (more prevalent than the motorized kind) are everywhere .... the "classic" cars of Camaghuey. Here and there we popped in to talk with the locals -- friendly, funny, and very proud of being Cuban. Meet American tourists on an equal footing though, economically, stratospheres apart. Happy to receive the tourists ....but have long-proven they can live without them.
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