Visit Cuba's First Coffee Plantations, Cuba (UNESCO site)

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During the 19th and early 20th centuries, eastern Cuba was primarily involved with coffee cultivation. The remnants of the plantations display the techniques used in the difficult terrain, as well as the economic and social significance of the plantation system in Cuba and the Caribbean. Nearly one hundred such farms were built in Santiago de Cuba by the French settlers who escaped the revolution in neighboring Haiti in 1789, who brought their customs and culture to cuba. Thirty-two of those coffee farms were built in the eastern Cuban province of Guantánamo.The other farms, the majority of them, were constructed in the zones of Gran Piedra, El Cobre, Dos Palmas and Contramaestre. These plantations became UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 2000. UNESCO stated: “Criterion iii The remains of the 19th and early 20th century coffee plantations in eastern Cuba are unique and eloquent testimony to a form of agricultural exploitation of virgin forest, the traces of which have disappeared elsewhere in the world. Criterion iv The production of coffee in eastern Cuba during the 19th and early 20th centuries resulted in the creation of a unique cultural landscape, illustrating a significant stage in the development of this form of agriculture.”

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