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a short history of

Isla de la Juventud

The Taíno indians came probably at 300 p.Ch. from the northern part of South America to the island. Besides aknowledgements in handcrofts and agriculture they had a developed system of religious cults and social structures. They were hunters and fishermen and were able to produce wappons and boats. They cultivated maniok, corn, yukka, pineapple, cotton and tabaco and produced tools and jewelry of wood, ceramics, gold and other metals. They expressed his religious culture with ballgames, music, dance and smoking. Today there are some things that remember about the Taíno, like the Bohío huts, the hammock, some music instruments and the word "Hurrican", that was the name of their god of tempest and destruction.

Columbus discovered the island on his second trip to "the new word" in the year 1494, but he forgot the place for much years, because he couldn´t find gold. So it became the homeland of pirats and people searching treasure, that fighted frequently against the spanish armada. The stories about that time gave Robert Stevenson the inspirition for his book "isle of treasure". Up to the End of the 19th century there came a lot of adventurers to search for the gold that was lost in the battles between pirates and Spaniards.

On 1830 there was founded Nueva Gerona, the actual capital of the island. Later Spaniards used the island exile much people, so Cuban national hero José Martí. In 1928 the dictator Machado constructed the big model prison "Presidio Modelo", where 1953 also Fidel Castro and 25 comrades were imprisoned after his attac on Moncada barracks.

After the revolution cuban peaple began to cultivate the island. Thousand of young people came to work and build plantations, that today allow the island to export nearlly all kind of vegetables to all Cuban provinces. In donation of that the name of the "Isla de Pinos" (island of pines) into "Isla de la Juventud" (island of youth).
They builded up more than 60 international schools and high schools, where studied every year up to 20.000 students from Afrika, Asia and Latinamerica.
Since "special periode" in Cuba takes place, much of the schools were closed. Today the most important economic factors are agriculture, mining of marble and gold, fishing, the ceramic factories and a slowly developing nature tourism.