If people leave, if people lose their crops of coffee and cocoa, if businesses fail or if major initiatives become dust over the years, in Baracoa many blame the "Pelú" (The Long-haired man). He was a Spanish who migrated to Cuba in the nineteenth century to whom the inhabitants of the first capital and bishopric of the archipelago blame for an old curse.
They say his last words, in the dock of Baracoa, just before boarding the boat that would take him back to his homeland were "in Baracoa many good plans will be generated as well as many good ideas, but all will crumble, nothing will be done.”And for some it was true.
It is just enough to walk around town, talk to neighbors, for the fatalistic sentiment to come up and someone will mention the ancient prophecy. It’s a strange phenomenon, difficult to understand, almost as if the legend he became was strongly anchored to the roots of that battered Cuban area where until 1959 there was only one rural small clinic over 230 kilometers away from Santiago de Cuba, which was then the capital of the East.
Today Baracoa has a Surgical Hospital and a health care network that includes 81 facilities including clinics, rehabilitation wards and emergency services.
Also there are currently building a Gravity Aqueduct with a water treatment plant attached to it that very quickly eliminate water shortages suffered by its inhabitants that live though, paradoxically, the largest water reserve in Cuba.
As a region, the town is part of the Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa, seat of the largest and most important UNESCO´s Biosphere Reserve in Cuba, and boasts the most abundant forest in the country (led by the largest plantations of coconut and cocoa in the country) and the largest reserves of precious hardwood.
All this without mentioning that in Baracoa tourism grows like wildfire, there are a dozen cultural institutions, it is relevant archaeological area and there are plenty of historical limelighta: Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Baracoa was the first village founded by the Spanish in Cuba, it was home to chieftain Guamá and near the mountains the Indian Hatuey was burned, the pirates attacks that it suffered plus the raids and looting gave birth to legends to tell and the intense Haitian migration that settled on their land – with its technological innovations and novel crops, made it an important production center.
But, still many out there like the story of the man in rags, whom people called crazy, with his bearded curls uncombed, bare feet and trousers rolled that wandered the city begging, or praying in thanks for a cup coffee or a meal until he started cursing.
"People threw stones at him, called him ugly things, and nobody likes that," a friend of mine from Baracoa told me in one of those afternoons that we were for telling stories. And, in effect, was that the cause of the fury of Pelú, whose myth survived centuries … and important changes.
His name was Vicente Rodriguez, a native of Poza, province of Corunna, in Spain, where he was born in 1857. He came to Cuba as most people from that land came, in search of fortune. He didn’t find it. According to digital bibliographies here on the island he became a missionary, gave his belongings to the poor and walked aimlessly along the east evangelizing.
He arrived in Baracoa 1893 and again in 1896. It was on this second trip to this easternmost Cuban city when, mistaking him for a void of understanding beggar, the villagers of Sabana town, now belonging to Maisi, stoned him and expelled him from the city. After that event the legend was born.
