Cuba - Lonely Planet [217]
In the late 1940s, Mexico City was a proverbial Hollywood for young Spanish-speaking Cuban performers and Moré wasted no time in making a name for himself. Staying behind when the rest of the band returned home, he was promptly signed up by RCA records and his fame rapidly spread.
Moré returned to Cuba in 1950 a star, and was quickly baptized the Prince of Mambo and the Barbarian of Rhythm by an adoring public who claimed him as their own. Never one to rest on his laurels, he kept obsessively busy in the ensuing years, inventing a brand new hybrid sound called batanga and putting together his own 40-piece backing orchestra, the explosive Banda Gigante. Along with the Banda, Moré toured Venezuela, Jamaica, Mexico and the US in 1956–57, culminating with a performance at the 1957 Oscars ceremony. But the singer’s real passion was always Cuba and, from Santiago to Cienfuegos, his beloved countrymen couldn’t get enough of him. Indeed, legend has it that whenever Benny performed in Havana’s Centro Gallego hundreds of people would fill the parks and streets around the Capitolio in the hope of hearing him sing.
With his multitextured voice and signature scale-sliding glissando, Moré’s real talent lay in his ability to adapt and seemingly switch genres at will. As comfortable with a tear-jerking bolero as he was with a hip-gyrating rumba, Moré could convey tenderness, exuberance, emotion and soul, all in the space of five tantalizing minutes. Although he couldn’t read music, Moré composed many of his most famous numbers, including ‘Bonito y Sabroso’ and the big hit ‘Que Bueno Baila Usted.’ When he died in 1963 of cirrhosis of the liver brought on by a lifelong penchant for rum, more than 100,000 people turned up at his funeral. Not surprisingly, no one in Cuba has yet been able to fill his shoes.
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Sights & Activities
On the main road approximately 8km east of Villa Guajimico, the bucolic Hacienda La Vega is a small cattle farm surrounded by fruit trees with an attached Palmares restaurant. After the city, it’s a good place to relax over a shady lunch. Unhurried travelers can hire horses and scamper down to a nearby beach called Caleta de Castro.
The Cueva Martín Infierno in the Valle de Yaganabo, 56km from Cienfuegos via the shore hamlet of Caleta de Muñoz, contains a 67m stalagmite said to be the world’s tallest. This cave is not always open for general tourism. Check with Cubanacán Click here in Cienfuegos first. The valley is also a good bird-watching area.
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NUCLEAR GHOSTS
Gaze wistfully across the placid Bay of Cienfuegos from Punta Gorda on a clear summer’s evening and you’ll spot an incongruous-looking silver dome glistening on the opposite shoreline. This semiabandoned architectural oddity is the infamous Juragua nuclear power plant; a joint government venture between Cuba and the Soviet Union that was conceived in 1976, but which – to date – has never reached completion.
Dogged by controversy from its inception, Juragua was originally designed to accommodate two 440-megawatt nuclear reactors that would ultimately power 15% of Cuba’s energy needs. But, situated just 288km from Florida Keys, the plan quickly came up against strong opposition in the US where the federal government cited it as a national-security issue and voiced valid safety concerns in the light of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.
Fatefully, thanks to the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, a US-Iranian-style nuclear standoff was never reached. Construction at Juragua began in earnest in 1983 but by 1992, with the USSR disbanded and the Cuban economy in freefall, the project was put on hold with work on the first reactor nearly 90% complete. With US$800 million required to finish the project, the Cubans tried vainly to revive Juragua in the ensuing years but in 1997 the plan was shelved indefinitely.
Today Juragua’s dome sits frozen in time, towering