Our History

Like many other places in Cuba, our municipality occupies a place in national history not only for the richness of its soil, flora, and fauna, for the beauty of its rivers or for the impetuous industrial development, but also for its history and for the efforts of those who built it through their struggles.

Moa: its meaning

Many scholars of local history link the name of the municipality with the presence of the aboriginal culture, mainly with the Aruaca, better known as Taínos. The geographic location of Moa, situated between important poles of the Indo-Cuban culture such as: Baracoa, Mayarí and Banes has led many researchers to think that before the arrival of the European conquerors to Cuba, the area of Moa had already been populated by the Indians from whom it inherited the name that identifies the municipality.

The Aruacos or Tainos populated the island of Cuba, moving from South America along the entire arc of the Antilles until they reached the island, taking advantage of their knowledge of the art of navigation. In the language spoken by these primitive inhabitants, the sound M is translated as water and OA as a location suffix, from which it was deduced, according to the studies carried out by Fray Ramón Pané, that Moa means "Water here" in the Aruaca language.

Transformations

In 1957 Moa was a neighborhood belonging to Baracoa, with a population of approximately 400 inhabitants. The only work centers were the nickel factory and the sawmill. In 1958 the Workers' Bureau led by the July 26th Movement was created in Moa. From that date on, this movement reached its peak in the area.

After January 1, 1959, the old structures of the pseudo-republic, such as the so-called neighborhood mayors' offices, began to disappear. The political responsibilities of the territory were assumed by the 26th of July Movement, represented at that time by Luis Abdalá Sánchez, Enrique Sierra and in place of the neighborhood mayor, Arístides Franco was appointed as deputy commissioner. But Moa was still a territory that in the political division of the country continued to belong to Baracoa or claimed by Sagua de Tánamo. In September 1959, the first school built by the Revolution was inaugurated, bearing the name of the revolutionary Frank País.

By the end of 1959 a group of doctors arrived in Moa offering free services in a dispensary center located in the old neighborhood of Moa. All this contrasts with the inauguration by the North American company of the hospital built in the exclusive Campside, which means that the social differences were still manifesting from the clash between the renewed ideas of the triumphant Revolution, worried about giving access to education and health to all the people and the capitalist-bourgeois conceptions held by the North American company that owned the nickel factory.

In 1959 the Yankees were ready to put into operation the modern nickel factory, which was completed in the first semester of that year. In October 1959 the factory started up with a little more than 1000 workers, working at low capacity for seven months. With the enactment of the so-called mining law, a serious contradiction arose, since it obliged the Yankee company to pay a part of the profits as taxes.

These measures were not accepted by the American company, which decided to close the factory on April 9, 1960 and leave all its workers unemployed. This arbitrary measure provoked a virile response from the workers who marched from the factory, spreading throughout the town singing the National Anthem and the Hymn of July 26 as a gesture demonstrating their identity with the Revolution.

The Yankee officials ordered that the factory facilities be preserved and together with some Cuban technicians left the country, leaving their former residences in Campside uninhabited. With the stoppage of the factory, the men from other places began to return to their municipalities of origin, others were hired for the construction of the road from Moa to Baracoa and from Baracoa to Guantánamo, those who remained in Moa without any type of employment received a subsidy for their sustenance from the revolutionary government.

When the North Americans left, in a gesture of contempt towards the Cubans, they said "that they would never be able to start up such a complex factory", but in reality, from the very moment of their departure, the revolutionary government began to take steps to start up such a facility. On the other hand, the owners of the mines refused to pay the workers' salaries, so in August 1960 they were nationalized by the revolutionary government and the workers themselves took over the management of the mines.

The facilities that the North Americans abandoned in their stampede, where in addition to the factory and the residential neighborhood there was the hospital and the school, began to become part of the national patrimony, because in the second half of 1960, during a visit made by Raúl Castro Ruz, he decided to create a school for militia officers in the former Baturro that served as a hostel and dining room for the Yankee company. The hospital was handed over to Public Health and the José Martí School to the Ministry of Education.

On August 5, 1960, the Cuban revolutionary government decreed the intervention of the nickel factory which from then on would be called Comandante Pedro Sotto Alba, making the words of Raúl Castro Ruz come true when he gave burial to the remains of the brave combatants fallen in combat during the Taking of Moa on June 26, 1958.

The rescue and start-up of the modern nickel factory is inextricably linked to the management of Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara, who at that time was in charge of the industrialization tasks. Che, rejecting the Yankee phrase that the Cubans would not start up the factory, summoned engineer Demetrio Presilla to put his talent and knowledge to achieve that purpose, which would become a reality on July 23, 1961.

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With the integration process of the organizations that participated in the struggle, the so-called ORI emerged in Moa, creating a grassroots organization subordinated to the region of Mayarí-Sagua, which made its presence as a territory in the political division that existed at that time a bit more complex, because without having the recognition of municipality, it depended administratively on Baracoa, politically on Mayarí and some dependencies were subordinated to Sagua de Tánamo.

In this year, 1961, measures of social impact continued to be taken in the territory, since brothels and gambling houses disappeared, opening the possibility of employment for many. Important services such as the post and telegraph services appeared, the first banking agency was founded, as well as the people's courts and local power. On the cultural level, amateur groups began to be created, which opened in the Ciro Redondo and El Balcón movie theaters, offering their services to the whole town and erasing the exclusivity with which they were designed.

On the political level, organizations such as the AJR, the UPC, the FMC, the CDR were founded and in the labor centers, unions were created. In 1961 Moa saw the birth of its first park, a place that was born as a result of the first voluntary work carried out and where two sculptures, one by the hands of the worker Bermúdez Fuentes Breff that worships the combatant Pedro Sotto Alba and another one to the mothers of the world made by Bonne are placed in this place.

The living conditions of the chrome workers were still very precarious, a situation that Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara could confirm during his first visit to Moa on May 26, 1961, immediately initiating the decision making process to change the living conditions of the workers of Punta Gorda and Cayo Guam.

By 1963 the ORI was severely damaged by the evil of sectarianism, when the people had already supported the declaration of the socialist character of the Revolution since April 1961, so it was appropriate as part of the process of radicalization of the process to move to a new stage where the leading organization would fill the vacuum of the ORI and lead with better political actions the destinies of the country. The United Party of the Socialist Revolution of Cuba (PURSC) was that organization.

On April 30, 1963, a commission of the PURSC arrived in Moa from Mayari, presided over by Angel Cao Fernandez, thus initiating the process of the constitution of the PURSC. In an assembly held in work centers 249 exemplary workers were elected, of which 66 comrades were elected as militants who formed 9 nuclei of the Party.

On September 8, 1963, the first Municipal Committee of the PURSC in Moa was constituted in the theater hall of the José Martí School, and was officially recognized as a municipality, which became part of the regional Mayarí-Sagua-Moa (Masamoa), as part of the Eastern Province.

The works of the constitution of the Party also included the realization of a census that could demonstrate that in an area of 730 Km² that included the municipality of Moa, there were a total of 16 371 people, 4 443 of them worked and only 354 were women. A total of 1,692 worked in the private sector and 827 were small farmers, to whom the Agrarian Reform had given ownership of their land. Several visits were received from personalities representing different political, mass and cultural institutions, including the visit of Vilma Espín in 1985.