Barajagua

Barajagua lies in eastern Cuba near the routes linking the Bay of Nipe with the interior. In the early colonial period it was a cattle-raising settlement where meat was prepared for preservation. Its name is closely associated with the beginnings of devotion to Our Lady of Charity, a revered image later taken to El Cobre.

According to tradition, in 1612 two Indigenous brothers and an enslaved boy set out from Barajagua to collect salt in the Bay of Nipe. There they found an image of the Virgin floating on the water and brought it back to their settlement. A small chapel was built for the image before it was moved to the mining community of El Cobre. The story links the rural cattle country of eastern Cuba to a devotion that spread far beyond it.