Cuba - Lonely Planet [177]
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NORTHERN MATANZAS
Northern Matanzas boasts an attractive rural landscape punctuated by low hills and lush valleys – most notably the Valle del Yumurí. Home to Cuba’s largest resort area (Varadero) and one of its biggest ports (Matanzas), the northern coastline is also the province’s main population center and is also the national center for industry and commerce.
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MATANZAS
pop 143,706
Splayed like a ruined Sparta beside its eponymous bay, Matanzas is a city riddled with dichotomies. Ostensibly one of Cuba’s most dilapidated urban centers, it is also one of its most interesting. White culture flourished here in the mid-19th century when influential men of letters concocted great works of literature and the city earned its kiss-of-death euphemism, the ‘Athens of Cuba.’ Meanwhile on the other side of the Río Yumurí in the humble neighborhood of Versalles, freed slaves united in secret brotherhoods or cabildos began to measure out the drum patterns that gave birth to rumba.
A port settlement that played a pivotal role in Cuba’s once dynamic sugar industry, early 20th-century Matanzas was a striking amalgam of bridges (17 in total) and theaters that rivaled Havana as a center of culture and learning. But the salad days didn’t last. Virtually ignored since the Revolution, modern Matanzas has long been overshadowed by antiseptic Varadero, 32km to the east, and few of the resort’s million or so annual visitors bother to give it a glance.
What they’re missing isn’t always visible to the naked eye. Many of Matanzas’ attractions are visceral, hidden beneath 50 years of postrevolutionary dust. If it’s five-star comforts you’re after, hop on a Víazul bus straight back to Planet Varadero. But if the thought of ritualistic drumming, beer over dominoes or the chance to meet some genuinely hospitable locals makes you fidget on your beachside sun-lounger, gritty, in-your-face Matanzas could be the place for you. Welcome to the real Cuba, amigos!
History
In 1508 Sebastián de Ocampo sighted a bay that the Indians called Guanima. Now known as the Bahía de Matanzas, it’s said the name recalls the matanza (massacre) of a group of Spaniards during an early indigenous uprising. In 1628 the Dutch pirate Piet Heyn captured a Spanish treasure fleet carrying 12 million gold florins, ushering in a lengthy era of smuggling and piracy. Undeterred by the pirate threat, 30 families from the Canary Islands arrived in 1693, on the orders of King Carlos III of Spain, to found the town of San Carlos y Severino de Matanzas. The first fort went up in 1734 and the original Plaza de Armas still remains as Plaza de la Vigía.
For a decade starting in 1817 Matanzas flourished economically with the building of numerous sugar mills. The export of coffee added further equity to the city’s bank balance and in 1843, with the laying of the first railway to Havana, the floodgates were opened. The second half of the 19th century was a golden age in Matanzas’ history when the city set new standards in the cultural sphere with the development of a newspaper, a public library, a high school, a theater and a philharmonic society. Due to the large number of artists, writers and intellectuals living in the area, Matanzas became known as the ‘Athens of Cuba’ with a cultural scene that dwarfed even Havana.
Home to several modern poets including Cintio Vitier and Carilda Oliver Labra, Matanzas is where Cuba’s first danzón was performed in 1879 and is also the spiritual home of the rumba. With a long history of slave occupation, there are a number of Santería cabildos (associations) here, the oldest of which dates back to 1808.
Orientation
Matanzas lies on the Vía Blanca 42km west of Varadero and 98km east of central Havana. The Carretera Central from Pinar del Río to Santiago de Cuba