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More than 400 years of history treasures the town of Cacocum, land of peasants, sugar growers, working people who have also given the country heroes and martyrs, of whom its people are proud.

San Pedro de Cacocum, 420 years later

More than four centuries have passed since July 9, 1599, when Don Juan Guerrero, notary of the town of Bayamo, recorded in the public deeds of that demarcation, the delivery as legitimate property, to Don Alonso de Cepeda, of the Cacocum ranch.

At that distance in time, whoever travels from Holguin via Bayamo, just 28 kilometers from the provincial capital, can admire the town that was emerging around the hacienda of Don Cepeda, which went from being a ranch to a town, then captaincy and finally municipality.

There is more than one theory about the origin of the name. In the writings of Don Fernando Ortiz, it is suggested that it comes from Macacu, name given to the kingdom of Angola. Macacu was once a powerful kingdom. Meanwhile the philologist Elena Guach, considers that it is due to the name of some aboriginal cacique of the zone that, according to the tradition, stood out by his rebelliousness before the Spaniards. José Juan Arron, in his study on Antillean lexicology, summarizes that "it is no more than a place of passage through the province of Oriente, a neighborhood of the Municipal term of Holguín, a town, a sugar mill, a lagoon, and a river and the true name of the neighborhood and the town is San Pedro de Cacocum".

The disquisitions on the name express the nature of its settlers, a little bit aboriginal, a little bit African, a little bit Spanish, to put it in Don Ortiz's own terms, something of Congo and something of Carabalí, in short, Cuban.

The land was the main source of wealth of the first cacocumenses. Fertilized with sweat, and even with the blood of slaves, the soil was suitable for agriculture, livestock and sugar cane plantations that allowed the production of sugar and other derivatives such as raspadura, honey and brandy.

Thanks to this, the small herd was expanding, so much so that by 1775 there was already a population of 215 people divided into 135 whites, 58 free blacks, 22 slaves; and in 1885, at the time of the establishment of the civil registry and court, the territory had about 50 houses.

But this peaceful and agricultural "town of passage" would also have its heroic deeds to tell. On October 10, 1868, when the bell of the Demajagua sugar mill rang and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes invited his slaves to join the fight for independence, the news spread like wildfire throughout the region. In Cacocum everything was ready, they were only waiting for the agreed date to arrive.

On October 14, 1868, in the Guayacán del Naranjo farm, Cacocum captaincy, on the banks of the Cauto River, Julio Grave de Peralta rebelled at the head of 120 men. Together with him, Eduardo Cordón Arallona stood up in solidarity to show Spain the injustice of the colonial yoke.

The example of those men inspired others like Pedro Salas, Cándido González, Luis Trinidad, Miguel Escalona, Modesto Leyva, Andrés Pelegrino and Francisco Cordovés who took part in combative actions during the independence struggles; and those who, after the Revolutionary Triumph, joined the fight against bandits, or the internationalist epics of Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, among them Miguel Angel Gonzalez Anzardo, Osmani Gonzalez Betancourt, Jorge Almaguer Tamayo, Isaias Infante Estrada and Dalmacio Cespedes Gonzalez.

Whoever travels along the national highway on the way to Bayamo, passing over the bridge crossed by the railroads, the same ones that at the beginning of the 20th century brought to Cacocum greater socioeconomic development, may think like Arrom, that it is a passing town, a bridge, a railroad station, a power station, a lagoon and a river; but the history that its people have built shows that San Pedro de Cacocum, 420 years later, is still a place where people contribute to the development of the nation and whose children unconditionally defend the Homeland.

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