Industrial Cuba: Being a Study of Present Commercial and Industrial Conditions, with Suggestions as to the Opportunities Presented in the Island for American Capital, Enterprise, and LabourPorter, Robert P. (Robert Percival)
History
Industrial Cuba: Being a Study of Present Commercial and Industrial Conditions, with Suggestions as to the Opportunities Presented in the Island for American Capital, Enterprise, and Labour
Porter, Robert P. (Robert Percival)
Cuba -- Description and travel; Cuba -- Economic conditions
Banes (Santiago de Cuba) is noted for its fruit business, as many as
4,651,000 bunches of bananas having been exported since 1890. Thirty-two
thousand pineapples were shipped in 1894, but the insurrection ruined
the business in 1896.
Baracoa (Santiago de Cuba) is the most eastern port of importance on the
north coast. It is the oldest town in Cuba and formerly was the capital.
It was founded in 1512 by Velasquez, whose house is still shown to the
traveller. Baracoa is far behind the times, but it has all the
potentialities for future greatness. The country along the coast is not
healthful, but the interior is not only fine scenically but also
excellent as to its health standard. There are no good roads and no
railways of any kind. Baracoa imports about nineteen thousand pints of
beer per annum from the United States, and Milwaukee sells at
twenty-five cents a bottle. Copper, cocoanuts and oil, bananas, and
cocoa constitute the exports. General Maceo and his followers
inaugurated the last Cuban revolution in Baracoa, on the 20th of
February, 1895, and within a year had marched through the Island to
Mantua in the west of Pinar del Rio.
[Illustration: THE PLAZA, CIENFUEGOS.]
Bayamo (Santiago de Cuba), with a population of about 4000 and an age of
about 350 years, is a Spanish relic city, being very like the earlier
cities of the mother country. It has eleven churches. It has none of the
modern conveniences and no railways, and its waggon roads are impassable
in the wet season. Bayamo never had a boom. It was the cradle of the Ten
Years' War.
Cobre (Santiago de Cuba), founded in 1558, is famous for its copper
mines. It has a magnificent sanctuary, in which is the little statue
known as the _Virgin of Charity_, which is claimed to have effected
miraculous cures of all kinds.
Gibara (Santiago de Cuba), also spelled with a "J," is the seaport for
Holguin, with which it is connected by a railroad seventeen miles long
and by a very bad waggon road. It has a population of about five
thousand. It is greatly in need of improvement.
Guantanamo (Santiago de Cuba) has a population of nine thousand, and is
the centre of the coffee district. Other agricultural products and
minerals abound. It was founded in 1843, and still is not a modern town
in the matter of conveniences. It is unhealthful because it has no
sanitary provisions. It has a fine harbour and is of much commercial
importance. It came into prominence during the late war.
Holguin (Santiago de Cuba), with a high and healthful location and
fifty-five hundred people, ought to be a much better town than it is,
and will improve under the new order. It is fifteen miles from the north
coast, and is in the centre of the hardwood industry. It was of great
military importance during the late war.
Jiguani (Santiago de Cuba), with a picturesque mountainous location,
and an old castle in the vicinity, will be attractive to tourists and
artists.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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