La Aldea Taína (CU)
La Aldea Taína is located in la Laguna del Tesoro in Ciénaga de Zapata (Villa Guama), in the province of Matanzas. It is one of the main tourist sites in Cuba. It is reachable by boat only, situated on an island.
The ancient village is a reconstructed archaeological ensemble, an attempt to reconstruct the life of indigenous tribe. It was created in 1962 by Celia Sanchez Manduley, a woman heroine of the Cuban Revolution, to represent the life of the aboriginal community of the island as closely as possible. La Aldea Taína was built to promote Cuban cultural roots, showing recreations and live shows that recreate myths and legends native to the ancient inhabitants of this place. There’s also a restaurant.
The Tainos were the most developed indigenous people of Cuba of the three existing at the arrival of the Spaniards, and were exterminated in a few years by the conquerors and diseases arrived from the Old World, in addition to collective suicides to avoid being enslaved.
We see here 25 statues moulded in clay and cement made by the artist Rita Longa, but there are also replicas of the house of the tribe's leader (cacique), of the priest/physician (behíque), round thatch roof huts (bohios), hunting and fishing cabins and square huts called caney.
Image: by Michal Zalewski - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1025594