Baracoa had been a buried dream in my heart for years. Since the first time I heard about its mountains, rivers, and ancestral stories, I knew I had to go someday. But life, with its twists and obligations, always postponed it. Until one day, almost by chance, I found myself on a bus heading to that forgotten corner of eastern Cuba. It wasn’t a planned trip, but a call I couldn’t ignore.
The history of Baracoa is intertwined with the blood of its ancestors, a tapestry of Taínos, colonizers, and Africans that still pulses in its streets. In the home of Doña Mercedes, a woman I met through a local friend, I discovered a treasure trove of stories. She isn’t a descendant of the Hatuey family, but her family has lived in Baracoa for generations and knows the Taíno traditions through oral tales passed down from grandparents to grandchildren. Among the dark wooden walls of her home hung a worn portrait of a Taíno chief with a firm gaze, his face sketched in charcoal on yellowed paper. "That’s one of ours," explained Doña Mercedes as she served coffee in cracked porcelain cups. "They say that when the Spaniards arrived, he took refuge in these mountains. He didn’t surrender. Here, the land holds his breath."
History blended with myth: she told how, centuries later, one of her great-grandmothers, the daughter of an Asturian settler and a freed African woman, had hidden jewels and manuscripts in that very house during the wars of independence. "We are like the Río Miel," she said, pointing toward the window, "which is born in the mountains and merges with the sea. That’s Baracoa: everything comes together, but nothing is lost."
The climb to El Yunque de Baracoa, that green plateau defying the sky, was a pilgrimage. Accompanied by Rafael, a local guide whose grandparents were cacao farmers, we began the ascent at dawn. The trail, steep and damp, wound through giant ferns and jagüey trees whose roots seemed like arms embracing the earth. "This mountain isn’t just stone," Rafael said as he cut a yarey leaf to shield us from the sun. "The Taínos called it Macagua; they believed the rain god slept here. Later, enslaved people would climb in secret to make offerings to their gods. It’s a place of struggles and prayers."
The air grew thicker, filled with the scent of wet earth and wild coffee flowers. Halfway up, we found a small altar of stacked stones, adorned with melted candles and beaded necklaces. "Here, people still ask the spirits for permission to keep climbing," Rafael explained, his tone respectful and not inviting further questions.
After three hours of climbing, the summit welcomed us with a cold breeze and sacred silence. From there, Baracoa looked like a toy between the sea and the jungle: the red roof of the church, the palm trees swaying in the wind, the painted canoes stranded on the beach. Rafael pointed east, where the Río Toa—Cuba’s most powerful river—flowed like a silver serpent. "My grandfather used to say that El Yunque is a magnet for dreams. That if you shout your wish from here, the mountain carries it to the ears of the ancients."
On the descent, Rafael told me about the cimarrones, runaway slaves who took refuge on these slopes. "There are caves where they carved symbols into the walls, marks of their stolen freedom." That night, over dinner with Doña Mercedes’ family, the story came to life: on the table, next to the bacán and cucuruchos, lay a rusted knife that, according to them, had belonged to a maroon ancestor. "History isn’t in books," Doña Mercedes murmured, "it’s in the hands that worked this land."
Baracoa doesn’t just tell you its past: it makes you breathe, walk, and sweat it. In every stone of El Yunque, in every story shared over coffee, I understood that this place isn’t just Cuba’s "first" town: it’s a refuge of memories that refuse to die, a map of resistances and fusions that, even today, centuries later, define the soul of an island.
