A sailor district of Havana

To the west of the Bacuranao River, in the Havana municipality of Habana del Este, is the town of Cojímar

By Félix Rubén Alomá

According to written documentation, Cojímar was the settlement of indigenous people.  After the conquest, in the location that it occupies today, towns and villages that contributed to its growth were founded, unlike other regions in the municipality.  Later on it became a place of recreation thanks to its beaches, climate and vegetation.

Cojímar has a history accumulated by its inhabitants.  It is recorded that in 1640, a fort was made to counteract the attacks of corsairs and pirates.  It also highlights the role of the patriot Pepe Antonio who fought with his militia against the English invaders. There, peasants were victims of the genocidal concentration by Valeriano Weyler when the mambises fought for the freedom of Cuba.

The ruins of the very first five-star hotel built in Havana, the Campoamor, are in this municipality.  The first US-Cuba communications cable was brought to Cojímar.

The neighborhood is well-known because of the outstanding American writer and 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature, Ernest Hemingway, lived there and was inspired by it.  The fishermen of the town built a monument in his memory, which is currently preserved in the same place where the writer used to dock his boat Pilar.

The place has also gained prestige due to other Cuban artists, for example, the great actors of theater, radio, film and television, Yolanda Pujols and Salvador Wood.

The popular imagination is enriched by the story published in the newspaper Le Monde about the fishing of a white shark baptized as “El monstruo de Cojímar” (The monster of Cojímar) in 1945.  In addition, recent Irma, with its hurricane waves, added to this coastal town another legend to its epic history.

A place that is part of the history of this area is the one created by Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz on March 8, 1976, the headquarters of the Training School of Kindergarten’s Educators (EFECI), under the National Institute of the Child, directed by the Heroine of the Republic of Cuba, Vilma Espín Guillois.

Since then, it has been the scene of important missions and programs of the Revolution such as the National Program of Social Workers, the preparation of educators to work in the Internationalist Literacy Campaign with the program “I can do it” at the headquarters of the Institute of Educational Improvement ( IPE), among other events and provincial, national and international activities.

Translated by ESTI