Baracoa

Columbus reached Cuba on his first voyage and named his landing place Porto Santo. It is generally thought from his description that this was Baracoa, though Gibara also makes the claim; he also described a nearby table mountain, almost certainly El Yunque, and called the spot the most beautiful place in the world. According to tradition he planted a cross, the Cruz de la Parra, in the sands of the harbour. Around 15 August 1511, the official foundation day, the conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, first governor of Cuba, built a settlement here and named it Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Baracoa, making it the oldest Spanish settlement in Cuba and its first capital. It received the title of city in 1518, when the first Cuban bishop was appointed here. The Taíno chief Hatuey, who had fled from Hispaniola and raised an army against the Spanish, was captured and burned at the stake.

Cut off from the rest of the island by mountains, Baracoa lived in the 17th and 18th centuries from contraband trade with French and British merchants. Early in the 19th century refugees from the Haitian Revolution settled here and began growing coffee and cocoa, and the forts of Matachín and La Punta were built in 1802 and 1803. Later in the century expeditions of independence fighters, including Antonio Maceo and José Martí, landed on this coast.

Until the revolution the only way in was by sea. In the 1960s La Farola, a 120 km road over the mountains from Guantánamo, ended the isolation. Hurricane Matthew caused widespread damage in October 2016, gutting many buildings with its storm surge, and in 2024 Hurricane Oscar made landfall nearby, its waves breaching the seawall and flooding the coast.

Baracoa's identity rests on being first: Cubans call it the Ciudad Primada, the first city, and its people point to the Cruz de la Parra in the cathedral and to the spot on the Malecón where the Spanish landing is remembered. Its hero, though, is the man who resisted the conquest. Hatuey's statue stands in the main square, and local art and crafts have an Indigenous inflection seen in few other Cuban towns.

Its long isolation also preserved a distinctive local culture and cuisine, built around coconut and cacao, which sets the town apart from the rest of the island. The name itself is thought to come from a Taíno word meaning "the presence of the sea".

Music is everywhere in the evenings. The Casa de la Cultura near Parque Independencia is the more polished stage, and the Casa de la Trova by the cathedral is the more traditional one, where local people and visitors dance together to live music. Baseball is followed as keenly as anywhere in Cuba, and the town's stadium stands on the beach at Playa de Miel. Mass tourism has stayed away, and the pace of life is slow, sociable and lived largely in the street.

About 78,000 people lived in the municipality of Baracoa in 2022, spread between the town and villages such as Boca de Yumurí, Jamal and Nibujón along the coast and in the hills. The area's main products are bananas, coconut and cacao, grown under royal palms along the Miel, Duaba, Toa and Yumurí rivers, and it is Cuba's main chocolate-making area. Tourism, mostly small-scale and run from family homes, is the other mainstay.

Getting around and getting supplies are constant concerns. Goods and visitors arrive over the single mountain road or by air, and the fuel shortages that have hit all of Cuba make both less reliable. The east suffers some of the longest power cuts in the country, along with water and food shortages, and repeated hurricanes have left many homes in poor condition. Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Oscar in 2024, which flooded the seafront, are both remembered.

Life is lived outdoors: bicitaxis and bicycles on the narrow streets, neighbours talking on doorsteps and along the Malecón in the evening breeze, and music drifting from the venues around the main square after dark.

Baracoa has a cuisine of its own, built on the coconut and cacao that grow around the town. Fish and seafood are served in a coconut milk sauce, a dish likened to a Thai curry and quite unlike the plainer cooking of the rest of the island. Bacán is made from bananas, wrapped in a banana leaf and cooked, and cucurucho is a sweet of coconut and plenty of sugar, mixed with orange, guava or pineapple and packed into a cone of palm leaf with a handy lid. Red bananas are sold along La Farola on the way in.

Chocolate is the town's pride. Baracoa is Cuba's main chocolate-making area, and bars and balls of chocolate are sold all over town, especially around Parque Independencia; the balls are unsweetened but mild. The local drink is hot chocolate brewed with cinnamon leaves.

State restaurants rarely serve the local dishes, so the best places to try them are the paladares and the family tables of the casas particulares. Fresh coconuts are sold along the beach at Playa de Miel.