From Omaja to Calixto
By Jorge Pérez Cruz

A Spanish falls madly in love with Yahíma, and her father, the Chieftain Jibacoa,  disappears with her in the thick forests. Never again was it heard about them. 

Then the residents of that district, in recognition to their brave attitude decided to call the area Majibacoa, forming an anagram which included the last syllable of Yahíma and the Chieftain’s name. Many villagers accept this explanation. 

The municipality is at about eight kilometers to the east of the capital city of Las Tunas. 

Although vestiges of aboriginal settlements exist in Las Parras, Los  Guayos and Las  Minas there is not precise information on those communities.

IN  COLONIAL TIMES 

In that time, the territory was divided into two jurisdictions: the Captaincy of the Party of Majibacoa, of Holguín, and the Party of Unique, belonging to Las Tunas.

The feelings of  rebelliousness of Chieftain Jibacoa multiplied in the vast plains of this area, and the mambises made justice. The roads that led from Las Tunas to Cauto River  were the roads through which  the troops quartered in the cities were provisioned, but they were also the scene of bloody battles. 

It is affirmed that this is the land  where the largest number of tombs of Spanish soldiers can be found in Cuba, because numerous convoys were constantly attacked and dismantled to avoid the provisioning of the enemy forces

And in this territory the dead for independence are remembered. On January 1st,  1870, the heroine Mercedes Varona was killed in Las Arenas. At beginning of the  same year Vicente García received General Máximo Gómez in that place, and on March 13th, Vicente García  fought in the riverbanks of the Naranjo River to stops the Growing of Balmaseda, a criminal military action that mutilated our fields and murdered children to avoid  support to the rebels.

OMAJA 

Although these lands were sold for a trifle by Lico Lopez to  the American  D. E. Kerr and his neocolonizing retinue, the Buena Vista  Fruit Company  took on the land and dismounted and  exported precious wood toward England . they also cultivated some dozens of acres of orange, grapefruit, and cotton, which were sent to the United States through the port of Antillas in the current province of Holguín.

By the year 1905 the Americans settled here and without wasting any time they began the construction of a town which reproduces the architecture of the American west. The streets were named after the men who bought them: Kreider, Frankbert, Blasser... 

Between 1909 and 1910  a section of the the Central Railroad was finished and when the splendid station was opened, it was named Majibacoa, and again the American prepotency prevailed and a new board with the name of  Omaha appeared overnight -  in allusion to a tribe of red skins - the Cubans rejected the interference and after several changes Omaja prevailed. 

The 1919 census  reveals Omaja´s population consistedof two thousand 381 inhabitants, it had 13 trades, three hotels, a phone center, a silent  cinema, two bakeries, two cemeteries (one for the Cubans and another for the Americans), a Ford agency, two saw-mills  and a shop of cabinetmakers.

In 1920, the political violence between the conservatives and the liberals, and the bank moratorium put an end to the accomplished attempts of neo-colonization. And in 1928 with the construction of the Central Highway the decadence of the town begins, because many of its inhabitants moved to Las Parras, Gastón y Buena Ventura, to come close to the important road. 

DE CALIXTO 

This territory was divided into country properties, clusters, places that belonged to several peasants whose parcels were condemned by landowners supported by the Rural Police, a repressive body that served the interests of the wealthy men in the pseudo-republic, mistreating and murdering the poor. 

In 1920, in the lands near  Calixto - today head city of the municipality of Majibacoa - 40 humble families were displaced by the land-eaters and the Manatí Sugar Company.

Abuse, eviction  and rape were known in this territory: in 1952, 15 families in the farm of the Silvas’s were victims of these outrages, in the 1956 they burned the houses of the Eusebio Valera and Juan Valera, and many more suffered similar consequences.

But the history of this area also registers the courage to face to the evil ones: there were cells of the 26 of July movement - born after the historical assault to the Moncada Garrison in 1953 by a group of youths led by Fidel. 

MAJIBACOA TODAY 

The present-day municipality of Majibacoa arises with the political and administrative  division - passed in the first Congress of the  Cuban Communist Party in 1975

It  limits to the North with the municipality of Puerto Padre, to the South with the province of Granma, to the east with that of Holguín and to the West with the city of Las Tunas. 

Its territorial extension embraces 709,03 square kilometers that represent 9,4 percent of the whole territory of the province.Todayir more than 40 thousand inhabitants enjoy a panorama very different from  that of the Mediated Republic. 

Doctors of the Family in the farthest places, a center of hygiene, a hospital, six medical posts, a policlinic... primary and secondary schools, a senior high school, a day care center... saw and protect the seeds of the future. 

With the opening the Majibacoa Sugar Mill and of the community of the same name a promising element was added to the local geography. And, although, the fields extend on a portion of the natural region Camagüey - Maniabón and in soils affected by a great percentage of salinity, not very fertile and of scarce arable layer, without many water resources, their men and women work with insistence to guarantee development. 

Here, the parcels that were inclined to usurpation, from the first of January of 1959 became fields where life flourishes, in spite of the material limitations imposed by the blockade.  Will grows, and a luminous future is ahead.