Mesoamerica 2019 - Day Ten,Trinidad de Cuba

Today is a full day in Trinidad de Cuba, a Unesco World Heritage city.

The short story is that Trinidad for many centuries was the center of sugar production and slave trading. It was not connected to any other part of Cuba by road until the 1950’s. So most of its focus was outward to other areas of the Caribbean and Europe. It developed quite prosperously until the great sugar crisis of the late 19^th century (which affected the Creoles in Louisiana if you remember from our fall trip). This also coincided with the beginnings of the Cuban liberation wars. The result was the city stopped developing, at least until the road in the 1950’s was built. Thus it’s architecture was sort of stopped in time. In fact the city is noted for being frozen in time…which is not exactly true but makes for good marketing.

It is also very clearly on the cruise ship agenda as was evidenced by boatloads (pun intended) of groups wandering around the historic center of the city. The buildings of this area have a very distinct architecture. Typically there is a central room one enters with two bedrooms, one on either side and a kitchen in the back. There are windows in the bedrooms which open up right on to the street and the windows have bars on them. This way in older times, women could sit in the windows and converse with people outside while maintaining the official position that they were staying in their houses. Also, the roofs have a unique look which is akin to the design of a ship’s hull. This was because most of the carpenters were in fact boat builders.

The weather has heated up quite a bit. We made our way up a very steep tower that afforded the best view of the city but which was a physical drain. It was another day of many, many pictures being taken. So many patterns and colors in this city. After our lunch we decided to walk a mile toward the outskirts of town to see a five generation old pottery. Mistake, Wife and I were both beat and this put us over the edge. LÍvan was kind enough to go out and get the car and drive us back. It was around 3 PM at that point and we called it a day. We are still working feverishly going through our many hundreds (in Wife’s case thousands) of pictures. We both took naps then went out for a quick sandwich were I found that a ‘tortilla’ in Cuba is 1) not a tortilla like in Mexico, a bread made of flour or corn nor 2) like a frittata omelet as in Spain but is fact 3) a fried egg sandwich!. Except according t our B&B host and guide that is not true. But it is just eggs cooked.

Tomorrow it is our last full day in Cuba. We drive to Santa Clara, a town with a rich association in the Cuban Liberation History. Then a long drive back to Havana where we spend the night before we leave on Wednesday for Mexico City.

A brief note before I sign off on the experience of being in a place that one’s own political mythology has demonized. LÍvan has been very good at giving us a balanced understanding of all the events that led to the Cuban Liberation Movements starting in the mid-1800’s, continuing to the war for Liberation in the 1890’s, the betrayal of the country by the elites to the US Mafia in the 1930’s and 40’s leading the Revolution by Fidel Castro. LÍvan is far from an apologist for current system pointing all kinds of flaws and issues that the country should be dealing with (one does not get the impression from conversing with him or others that things are that repressive here), but because someone finds flaws in their own system, it does not mean that they have a longing for your system. I think this is an attitudinal baggage many