Most travelers of the Caribbean will be familiar with El Yunque National Forest in the US colonial territory of Puerto Rico. Cuba’s El Yunque [literally “the anvil” in Spanish] is massive by comparison. Part of a protected biosphere only ten kilometers from Baracoa and visible from all points in the city, El Yunque is one of the few places in Cuba still littered with the archaeological remains of indigenous people who were mostly captured as slaves, attacked and in other ways devastated by Christopher Columbus and fellow conquerors in the first ten to twenty years after his arrival on October 28, 1492. El Yunque, July 2016.
