The Viñales Valley was declared a Cultural Landscape of Humanity by UNESCO in 1999. The main feature of this landscape are the rounded limestone hills, called mogotes, that surround the valley. But beyond geology, cultural landscape is the culture developed by its inhabitants, the interaction between the environment and the human being. The tobacco culture was born, for example, of the relationships between people and land in Cuba, and has developed in Viñales over the past 200 years, in the Vueltabajo region, which offers one of the best tobacco products in the world. Like that, in Viñales, we will find other sincere and authentic expressions developed from colonization: Yoruba and Kreole dances, decimism and repentism, oral literature and many others that make up that intangible character called cubania.

In the small Viñales society there have been major changes in recent years, as in the entire island, but they are more recent and are occurring more quickly. Until recently, this village in western Cuba was dedicated exclusively to agriculture, the guajiro, with the name of the hangos. Tourism, for its part, has been a rebound in the local economy, but it has given foreign currency to those who are mainly engaged in housing and services, and the economic differences between the population have intensified. As for culture, Miguel Ángel Díaz Catalá, one of the members of the project Ventana al Valle, has pointed out that “some strange cultural consumption habits have prevailed, that have nothing to do with the traditional and popular culture of the people, and that they are being introduced mainly through tourism”.

On the other hand, the normalization of relations with EE.UU. and the legislative changes on the island have led to an increase in tourism in the coming years: “Cuba is increasingly integrated into a globalized world and tourism occupies an increasing place in the social and economic life of Viñales,” says Díaz Catalá.

A window to Cuban identity

In 2010 they presented the community project Ventana al Valle, with the objective of preserving and promoting the main signs of cultural identity of the region and Cuba, with special attention to the transmission to the new generations. The project has been well received by the people and many people are participating. Workshops on music, repentism, history and painting have also been organized. The dance groups Arison and Arichiqui have been active in the area and have received numerous awards, one of which was given by the Cuban Revolution Defense Commission (CDR). "Neighborhood nights" are many of the actions that are performed and that are disseminated both on the web ventanaalvalle.org and on Facebook.

But the project wants to grow and now they intend to build a cultural space, because creators need a ranchon or a theater where to show their plays. The work began a year ago, after overcoming a number of bureaucratic obstacles. A building is being erected with a stage, changing rooms, recording studio and other infrastructure, but often works are paralyzed due to lack of material or money. “The local government, today a priority in education, health and housing, cannot give money to the project, but it gives us other kind of help and we have its approval,” explains Díaz Catalá.

With the aim of self-financing, they have set up a room to receive turistas.Gran part of the accommodation is carried out in private houses authorized in Cuba, which allows tourists to better know their citizens and socialize part of their benefits. In the case of Ventana al Valle, the negative impact of tourism, the generation of inequalities, is eliminated and becomes a benefit for the community. They're working to enable a second room and they'll have it ready for the summer. However, this is not enough to pay for the construction and some friends of the Basque Country have organized themselves to support the project, with the help of several Basques living on the island.

Connection with the Basque Country

Many foreign visitors have been through the Ventana al Valle project in recent years, many of them Basque. Díaz Catalá has lived in the Basque Country, and from there came the relationship of its beginnings with the Basques. Subsequently, he has made the project known and has been visited by many Euskaldunes every year. In fact, some visitors approach Viñales in search of such genuine, intangible and sometimes indeterminate funds from Kubania, and in the project they find an increasingly difficult spirit to capture throughout Cuba, in an open environment of creation.

Basques feel special complicity from the outset in Ventana al Valle, unlike in other parts of the island, where people have news of Euskal Herria. “It’s a familiar atmosphere, cultural needs are very similar in every corner of the world, but there we’ve seen a lot of people very involved. Although I had not yet achieved physical space, I was surprised that the project was so alive,” says Naroa Idoiaga of Gernika, who was there last year. “Like many others, we approached Viñales with the intention of spending two or three days, and knowing the project we stayed more than a week.”

The Basque management team has organized several activities to publicize the project and to gather its support: exhibitions, conferences, sale of material at fairs… Amparo Loizaga is the soul of this group and speaks with passion of the project: “I fell in love with these people’s passions to reclaim and spread their identity among themselves and visitors; Euskal Herria, in spite of the differences, has made such a claim and we are proud of our culture,” says Loizaga. The Viñales project is local, but it is also a meeting point between cultures, as Loizaga says: “The txalapartaris or bertsolaris go, they have to act there, along with those there, as it is a place to take and give.”