Matanzas

Matanzas is the Cuban city nearest the United States. Located on the north shore of the island of Cuba, on the Bay of Matanzas, sandwiched between Havana and Varadero, it is a mere ninety miles from Florida. The 'Athens of Cuba, ' as it was known in the heyday of the nineteenth-century slave-driven, sugar-based boom, Matanzas is renowned for its cultural heritage. It is the birthplace of the traditional romantic danzon-Cuba's national dance- and the sensual rhythmic guaguanco, a product of the city's preeminence as a hub of Afro-Cuban culture. Matanzas is the only foreign place in which an American vice president was sworn into office. Matanceros engaged in heavy commercial trading with Boston merchants for decades, exporting sugar and importing hard granite cobblestones to pave the streets. It is the place where Cuban baseball and modern Cuban art began. The city was home to the country's first building wired for electricity, the first electric street cars, and the first public library, yet most Americans have never heard of it. Miguel Bretos' fascinating history of his hometown remedies this oversight. Bretos arrived in the United States at age eighteen, but his family retains close ties to the city where they lived for generations. From the aboriginal Tainos to the coming of revolution, Bretos unfolds the Matanzas story with solid research, wit, clarity, and the kind of vivid detail that can come only from an insider.

Year

2010

Language

English

Publisher

University Press of Florida

Editions

2

Pages

317

ISBN

9780813034324

Data source: Wikidata