On February 2nd, 1514, in the chiefdom of Mayanabo (Punta de Guincho), Diego de Ovando and a group of horsemen who had marched by land from Jagua (Cienfuegos) met together with forty men who arrived by sea with food, weapons, tools and fishing supplies, from the first town of Baracoa.
Both groups were commissioned by the Governor General Diego Velázquez to found a town with its Town Hall and Parish Church and houses built by the aborigines with yagua and guano as their bohíos.
“…everyone gathered and under the same cross that the Admiral planted there on November 18th, 1492, the town was founded, with the usual ceremonial”, says Jorge Juárez Cano, in his book Apuntes de Camagüey.
Two years later, another group joined, this time made up of men, women and children. The coastal point was good for defense against any contingency and trade, but adverse living conditions due to pests, lack of water and infertile soil.
The town acquires, then, the wandering quality when it travels on the shoulders of the colonizers towards a plain bathed by the Caonao river. However, relations with the Indo-Cubans of the chiefdom were not cordial due to the exploitation to which they were subjected, the natives revolted, attacked and burned the second settlement.
After a forced march, the surviving Spaniards arrive at a promising land, located between the Tínima and Hatibonico rivers. The area was known by the aborigines with the place name Camagueybax. Their cacique welcomes them willingly and provided lodging, water, firewood and provisions.
One of the first seven populations founded by the Spanish conquerors in Cuba and in America was definitively established in that region. The good lands of this place far from the sea, almost in the middle of the Island, facilitated, in addition to gold mining, the development of agriculture and, above all, livestock.
Already in the year 1741, the Villa de Santa María del Puerto del Príncipe had 13,000 inhabitants and in a certain way the constructive conditions of the houses and other governmental and religious buildings had improved. Since then, the singular layout of the narrow and winding streets that link squares and small squares, characteristic of the current historic center of the city, has been present.
During the dry season, the water reserves in the new settlement also diminished and four decades later, a group of potters began the manufacture of red clay vessels, similar to the classic Andalusian ones. For centuries, the inhabitants have appreciated the existence of the tinajónes (earthenware jars), which have woven their own legends and even the singular friendly phrase “Whoever drinks water from the tinajón, stays in Camagüey.”
The district of Port-au-Prince is the one that deserves the most care, since it is undeniable that the ideas of independence [...] is where some heads ferment...Leopoldo O'Donnell (1845)
The "principeños"(people born in the Camagüey city) also played a fundamental role in the feeling of the Creole and the dreams of independence that would later become the Cuban nationality.
The prominent professor and historian from Camagüey, Elda Cento Gómez (1952-2019) highlights that Puerto Príncipe was one of the key scenarios of the rebellion of José Antonio Aponte and the projects of the uprising that Joaquín de Agüero and his companions decided to start in San Francisco Jucaral, where they drafted and approved a declaration of independence.
The independence struggles had as paradigms Salvador Cisneros Betancourt, who became President of the Republic in Arms, and Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz who reached the ranks of Major General in the Ten Years War, at the head of the Mambí cavalry that was the terror of the Spanish soldiers.
- Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez