Chorro de Maíta Native Village A Trip of 500 Years

Visiting Chorro de Maíta is like making a fantastic trip through time. The most important archaeological site in Cuba and the major indigenous cemetery of the Caribbean is on the northern coast of Holguin, 750 kilometres east of Havana.
This village, also called Yaguajay Yucayeque Turey - the Resplendent Sky Village in the Arauca language - has nestled for 500 years in the shadow of Yaguajay, a summit of the Maniabón Mountains.

The mysteries of life and death are presented to visitors in 2,000 square metres, where some fifty burial sites are preserved in their original shape, length and depth. Although excavation began in the 1930s, the site was discovered in 1976 by archaeologist and intellectual José Manuel Guarch del Monte.
Chorro de Maíta (Maíta Spring) was named for the former owner of the farm estate in the 18th Century and for a famous spring located in the area.

Many years of work revealed the greatest indigenous burial ground of the Caribbean, where scientific tests have proven there lived a group of natives dedicated to agriculture and pottery. Further studies have indicated this village was a reflection of an even more primitive community on the site some ten thousand years ago.

Some of the most attractive mother-of-pearl, flint, pottery fragments and stone and shell pendants of the region are exhibited here, while mortars and necklace beads form part of the museum′s heritage and allow us to experience the ingenious and marvellous world of Cuba′s first settler...