The Cuba discovery by Christopher Colombus.

The island of Cuba was discovered October 28 of 1492 after the disembarked of La Pinta, La Niña and La Santa María, the first three european ships under the command of the admiral Cristóbal Colón during his first trip toward the New World. Between that date and November 5, the ships moved for the coast of the Orient of Cuba, and on Friday November 2, Cristóbal Colón, designated at two of his men so that, during six days, go deep into in the Cuban territory.

Christopher Colombus taking possesion

In honor to the Catholic Kings' daughter, his benefactors, Colón called it island Juana, first of various names that successively this island received at this time; finally it called Cuba like variant of her aboriginal name: Cubanascan.

Colombus Landing

This landing is carried out for Bariay, place insignia of the county of Holguín, in the Oriente of Cuba, where the admiral discovered a new world that, according to his words, era "The must beautiful earth than human eyes had ever seen". 500 years later, who arrive until that place they can't only relax with the knowledge about the historical episode, but find the peace and the quietness of a tourist singular area.

Two years later, when exploring the south coast of Cuba during his second trip, the Admiral would notice of the diversity of those indigenous residents, because the aboriginal of the Oriente of Cuba that accompanied him, could not understand each other with the inhabitants of the western part.

Certainly, the population of the Island was made up before four millennia, with the arrival of diverse migratory current: the first ones probably coming from the north of the continent through Florida, and the later ones, arrivals in successive waves from the mouth of Orinoco throughout the arch of Antilles.

Among those approximately 100 000 natives that populated the Island when beginning the Spanish conquest, groups existed with different levels of socio-cultural development.

The oldest and poor inhabitants - already almost extinguished in the XV century - lived off the fishing and the harvest and they manufactured their instruments with the shells of big mollusks. Another group, without scorn the shell, possessed instruments of polished stone and, next to the collected activities, they practiced the hunt and the fishing.

More advanced group, those coming from South America - belonging to the Tronco Aruaco - were agriculturalist, and with their principal cultivation, the yucca, they made the cassava, food that could not eat up only in the moment, but rather it could be also conserve. They manufactured objects and ceramic recipients and they possessed a varied one instrumental of shell and polished stone.

Taino Village

Their wooden houses and palm guano - the huts - contained in aboriginal petty towns, would constitute during several centuries a fundamental element of the habitat of the Cuban peasant.

That October 28 of 1492, the aboriginal population of the island had signed another contract it would not be reflected in any record written by hand: The one belonging to countdown toward his total annihilation, Because contaminated with unknown illnesses for them (and in front of which their immunologic system didn't oppose defenses) and under the burden of the hard work, one by one was extinguishing, and the human blaze that it was our first community finished being hardly a flame perceptible, unable to give at least some light, heat and color to the mosaic of the citizenship.