Playa Girón

The village of Girón takes its name from Gilberto Girón, a French pirate of around 1604. Before 1959 the Zapata Peninsula, a land of swamp, forest and coral rock, was among the poorest parts of Cuba. Until 1976 the Bay of Pigs belonged to the old province of Las Villas; it was then reassigned to Matanzas Province.

In April 1961 Playa Girón was one of two landing sites in the Bay of Pigs Invasion, when more than 1,400 armed Cuban exiles of Brigade 2506, trained and financed by the US CIA, came ashore in an attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. The main force landed at Playa Girón on the night of 17 April. Over 72 hours fighting spread across the Ciénaga de Zapata, and Playa Girón was the last area held by the invaders before they were defeated by Cuban government forces. In Cuba the whole episode is known as Girón, and the Museo Girón in the village tells the government's account of it.

After the revolution the peninsula was among the first areas the new government developed, with roads, schools and a hospital, and its people have long supported the state. Today the village also draws visitors — divers for the clear water of the bay and birdwatchers for the swamp.

The battle shapes local identity. Roadside memorials recall the fighting, and since 1962 Cuba's national amateur boxing championship has carried the beach's name, won over the years by champions including Teófilo Stevenson. The singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez named a song after a fishing boat called Playa Girón, on which he worked in 1969 and 1970, its title also recalling the battle.

Everyday culture is that of a small rural community in a vast wetland. People on the peninsula live in scattered villages with a strong sense of their swamp; once home mostly to charcoal burners and fishermen, they now also have park guides, dive instructors and homestay hosts. The swamp is the home of the Cuban crocodile, which in the wild is restricted to Zapata.

Music and dominoes fill the evenings much as elsewhere in Cuba, at a slower pace. Birdwatching has become part of the local way of life too: guides take visitors into the swamp in search of the tocororo, or Cuban trogon, the national bird, and the bee hummingbird, the smallest bird on the planet.

The village is part of the municipality of Ciénaga de Zapata, the largest in Cuba by area, which had about 10,000 people in 2022 spread over more than 4,000 square kilometres; Playa Larga, at the head of the bay, is the municipal seat. A large part of the municipality is protected as the Zapata Swamp, after which it is named, and it has the lowest population density in Cuba. Settlements are small and far apart, linked by the coast road and the road north through the swamp.

Most people work in farming or in the growing tourism sector — homestays and services for birdwatchers and divers, with dive centres at Playa Larga, Playa Girón and Caleta Buena.

Daily life follows the national pattern of low state wages, shortages and long power cuts, made harder by distance: transport is thin, and fuel shortages make getting in and out harder still. Like the rest of Matanzas, the area has lost many young people to emigration.

Food on the peninsula is cooked mostly in family homestays rather than restaurants. Fish and shrimp from the bay come grilled or stewed with garlic and lime, and lobster appears when available, alongside the national staples of rice and beans, pork, chicken, yuca and plantain. Homestays commonly offer breakfast and dinner to their guests.

The swamp adds its own specialities. Crocodile meat is served at the restaurant of the crocodile farm near Playa Larga and in some homestays, and jutía, a large native rodent, is an old rural dish for the adventurous. Casabe, the flat cassava bread with Taíno roots, is still made in parts of the province.

Drinks are simple: strong sweet coffee in the morning, fresh fruit juices, and rum and beer in the evening, with guarapo, pressed sugar-cane juice, sold at roadside stands in the cane country on the way in from the autopista. Beside the snorkelling pool at the Cueva de los Peces, a simple restaurant feeds divers between swims.