Current Time in Guantánamo, Cuba

Guantánamo is the capital of the easternmost province of Cuba, standing on a plain a few kilometres inland from the large natural harbour of Guantánamo Bay. Mountains rise on three sides, and they cast a rain shadow that makes the area unusually dry for the Caribbean, with cactus, agave and thorn scrub on the lower slopes. Sugar cane, coffee, cocoa and salt pans occupy the valleys and the coastal flats.

About two hundred and thirty thousand people live in the city, the third largest in eastern Cuba. Agriculture and food processing dominate the local economy, with sugar, coffee from the mountain plantations, cocoa, coconut and salt production, alongside light manufacturing, construction and services. The province is one of the poorest but also one of the most culturally distinctive in the country, and tourism has grown around the beaches, mountains and music.

The bay was sighted by Columbus in 1494 and later used by pirates and by the British during their eighteenth-century campaigns. The town itself was founded in 1796 by settlers from the region, many of them French planters and their households who had fled the revolution in Haiti, and this French Caribbean influence left a lasting mark on the architecture, coffee growing and music of the area. Guantánamo grew as an agricultural centre in the nineteenth century and played a part in the wars of independence against Spain. In 1903 the United States acquired a lease over part of the bay for a naval station, an arrangement that has continued despite Cuban objections and has given the name of the city an international recognition quite separate from the town itself.

The city centre is pleasant and unhurried, arranged around Parque Martí with its neoclassical parish church of Santa Catalina de Ricci, the old Spanish barracks and colonnaded streets of pastel houses. The Municipal Museum occupies a former prison, and a viewpoint in the hills looks out over the distant bay. The most unusual attraction lies in the countryside at Boquerón, where a self-taught farmer spent decades carving hundreds of life-sized animals from the local rock, creating an extraordinary open-air stone zoo. Beyond the province lies Baracoa, the first Spanish settlement in Cuba, reached by a spectacular mountain road, and the Alejandro de Humboldt National Park, a World Heritage Site of exceptional biodiversity.

Guantánamo is a musical city of national importance. It is the home of changüí, an early rural style built on tres guitar, bongo, marimbula and guayo that is one of the direct ancestors of Cuban son and therefore of salsa. Festivals celebrate the music each year, and Afro-Cuban and Haitian-derived traditions such as tumba francesa dancing are still practised. Local food includes coconut and cocoa specialities from the eastern provinces.

Roads and buses connect the city with Santiago de Cuba, an airport handles domestic flights and a railway serves the region. A university and medical school train students locally.

Guantánamo is worth knowing for its music, its dry mountain scenery and its distinctive eastern Cuban culture.