Few places on the island are more popularly seared into local memory than this one. Here Columbus not only landed for the first time in Cuba on 28 October 1492, but his men also attacked the local indigenous people who greeted them. The events served Columbus because the incident laid the foundation of his claim that not all “Indians” were alike and deserved humane treatment. Based on this logic, Columbus himself launched a genocidal campaign of enslaving and selling Cubans and other islanders in Mediterranean slave markets over the course of his next several voyages. Taking nearly five thousand for his own sale and that of the King of Spain alone, Columbus made his fortune not from gold or Conquest but from the capture and sale of men, women, and children. Baracoa, July 2016.
