CAMAGÜEY.- Our city has many emblematic places, including its winding streets, which features are a trace found in every village founded during the medieval radiance of the XVII century.
When the definite seat of the improvised village of guano and wood was decided, it started to be built in stone and mud that, without any order or concert, led their interests in roads and trails searching for water, grass and squares. In that time, some trails and narrow passages appeared to facilitate the circulation between streets, communicate common houses or limit terrains with a public passage way between them. That could be the origin of the alleys.
Alleys that, like the rest of the urban surroundings draw the city, some with singular mace forms and others used in the urban landscape to reduce the way or take a detour off the main street, are a vital part of the urban distribution and of course, many of them are as old as the very origins of the local population, without loosing today its utility and social value.
Now it is harder to determine, in the setting of the modern city, which are the most important alleys because they all play a part. However, there are some with a remarkable design in the urban picture like Príncipe, now Goyo Benítez, and the alley of La Merced, that became later Ramón Virgilio Guerrero, but always known as Popular.
Many of the reasons to name this alleys are lost in the memory of time, although others were recorded by chronicles, like in the case of the alley del Cañón, since it was a passage to the shores of a lagoon defended by a huge iron cannon that was located there for a long time without ever being fired. The place that is today occupied by the alley Finlay in the center of the city was Academia, a narrow street that joins Luaces and Tuinicú, its name is due to a famous dancing academy that used to function there; Gloria, today called Industria, earned popularity because the most recognized brothels in the city were located there; and the alley La Miseria, around El Carmen Square, is called like that because of its short extension, since it is only a little over 30 feet long and there is only a single house. Today it is called Tula Oms de Aguilera.
A tragic alley is Pollo, today Madame Curie street, being a part of Previsora neighborhood, place where the dictatorship of Machado, in the decade of the 1930, murdered numerous revolutionary young men, near it is the Alley of Santa Bárbara with a brick bridge built over the creek of that very name by the mythical father Valencia amidst the XIX century. The narrowest alley in the city, is Cura, opened between 20 de Mayo and Plácido Streets, is barely 5 feet wide. Another narrow alley and perhaps the most ancient and popular in the city is La Poza del Mate, also known as the alley of Funda del Catre, today with the official name Ramón Ponte.
And if we are talking about curiosities, we have to mention the dead end of the Theater, or El Pasillo, located on a side and almost inside the Principal Theater. Another dead end is Padre Carmelo, in La Caridad neighborhood. The twisted alley of the Cuerno (Horn), called like that for its shape, is today Manuel de Quesada and Tío Perico, that is now Vate Morales, is a reminder of an old fisherman that had his hut at the end of this alley next to Hatibonico river.
In this list, we cannot skip the local alleys of Correa, Las González, San Martín, Fundición, Alegría, de Los Ángeles, Apodaca, Los Martínez and Aruca. Also the alleys la Risa, de Las Niñas, La Magdalena, Monitor, Los Sacristanes, Camposanto y Biosca, Mojarrieta, San Serapio and Santayana add up to this urban landscape.
It is timely to mention the alley of La Cucaracha, in La Vigía; the alleys Pica Pica, María del Rosario, Tucunicú, Tuinicú, Perro, Triana, Paso Chiquito and around the center of the city, the alleys de la Cárcel, Owen, Nepomuceno, Jaime, Pasaje Estévez and Ojo de Agua, that are also a part of the urban landscape in our city.
Translated by Elianna Díaz Mendieta