The province of Santiago de Cuba was created in 1976, when the government redrew all of Cuba’s internal boundaries, dividing the former province of Oriente into five new jurisdictions.

Located on the island’s southeastern end, Santiago de Cuba covers 6,227.8 sq km (2,404 sq miles), or nearly 5.7% of Cuba’s territory. But its cultural, historic, demographic and economic influence over the rest of the island is much greater than those numbers would suggest.

Two-thirds of the province’s land area is mountainous, including most of the southern slope and a large portion of the Sierra Maestra Cuba’s largest and tallest mountain range.

This is sparsely populated terrain cut by deep valleys with coffee plantations shaded by tropical forests. Most of the province’s inhabitants live in the cultivated upper Río Cauto basin, the Central Valley and the landlocked depression of Santiago de Cuba.

Santiago de Cuba is located in one of the Caribbean’s most active seismic zones. In 1932, a 6.7-magnitude earthquake severely damaged the city. The province has also endured considerable environmental damage; deforestation, river damming, overgrazing in mountains and improper waste disposal have all taken their toll on Santiago de Cuba.

Since the 1960s, three freshwater reservoirs have been built in the upper Cauto River basin to suit the needs of a growing population, control catastrophic floods and serve agriculture. Combined, they can hold over 510 million sq meters (135 billion gallons) of water.

Damming the Río Cauto ultimately caused extensive environmental damage to the basin and croplands, including fading runoff, saline intrusions and aridity of soils downstream. All of this has, in turn, reduced agricultural yields.

Farming has replaced most of the province’s once-vast natural forests. Today, woodlands cover only 25% of its territory, a low ratio given the size of its mountains.

POPULATION

With 169 people per sq km, Santiago de Cuba is the most densely populated province after the City of Havana. In 2012, the province had 1,053,837 inhabitants, representing 9.4% of all Cubans. However, population growth has virtually stagnated at 0.1% annually between 2007 and 2012 a situation likely related to rapidly decreasing living standards. In contrast, the population grew by 1.4% annually during the 1970s, and by 1.0% in the 1980s.

One out of every 150 santiagueros leaves the province every year. From 2006 to 2011, the net migration balance cost the province 38,000 people, or 3.6% of the total.

The capital city, also called Santiago de Cuba, had a population of 425,851 in 2012, making it the second-largest city after Havana. The city is home to 40.4% of the province’s inhabitants, up from 38% in 1981 and 35% in 1970.

Founded in 1514 by Diego Velázquez, Santiago de Cuba is one of the earliest settlements in the Americas serving as Cuba’s capital in the first half of the 16th century. It was also the scene of the most decisive battle of the 1898 Spanish-American War.

Other important cities are Palma Soriano (76,179 as of 2002, the last available year), Contramaestre (44,752), San Luís (33,717), La Maya (21,278), Dos Caminos (11,907), Baire (11,659), Mella (11,195), El Cobre (10,477), Mayarí Arriba (10,264), El Cristo (9,354), Alto Songo (7,338), Baraguá (5,889) and Palmarito del Cauto (5,446).

The three largest cities account for just half of all residents of the province.

AGRICULTURE

Santiago de Cuba was the province least hurt by the 2002 downsizing of Cuba’s sugar industry. Thanks to its higher sugarcane yields, only one sugar mill was dismantled Rafael Reyes (formerly Unión) while the Los Reynaldos (Baltony) mill was converted to produce only molasses. The América Libre (América) and Paquito Rosales (Borgita) mills have been among the best-performing mills on the island.

Sugarcane is currently grown on some 75,000 hectares (185,000 acres). In its heyday in the late 1980s, Santiago de Cuba’s eight sugar mills produced more than 350,000 tons of sugar. Each harvest was worth in excess of $190 million at the preferential prices paid by the Soviets.

But by 2002, the sugar harvest had fallen to 220,000 tons worth $33.4 million, and only 84,600 tons by 2011. Refined sugar, alcohols and torula yeast are also produced as well.

Santiago de Cuba is the island’s top coffee producer, accounting for 35% of Cuba’s total coffee crop. Yet decades of orchard neglect and the continued exodus of farmers from the mountains to the cities has depleted the quality and volume of Cuba’s coffee crop.

At present, only 23,000 ha are devoted to coffee, down from 30,400 ha in 2006. Output, meanwhile, has dwindled to less than 2,000 tons a year, compared to more than 15,000 tons in the early 1960s.

Coffee industry waste is a major cause of the widespread contamination of runoff waters, though the recent introduction of cleaner Colombian technologies has reduced the amount and toxicity of such wastes.

HURRICANE SANDY

On Oct. 25, 2012, Santiago de Cuba received a direct and devastating blow from Hurricane Sandy. The government has not disclosed many details, but it’s known that more than 100,000 houses were severely damaged or wiped out — and that the hurricane’s impact on the already weakened sugar industry was largely responsible for Santiago de Cuba’s dramatically reduced sugar harvest.

The powerful storm also caused large but unspecified losses in coffee plantations, and knocked down the 220-kV, 110-kV and 33-kV transmission lines in several places.

INDUSTRY
Santiago de Cuba boasts the island’s largest industrial hub outside of Havana, but the economic crisis has slowed down or even paralyzed many facilities. With few exceptions, most factories are concentrated around the city and port of Santiago de Cuba.

One-third of Santiago de Cuba’s industrial production comes from electric power generation and petroleum refining.

The Renté and Antonio Maceo thermoelectric plants, with 300 and 500 MW of capacity respectively, rank among the most important in Cuba, together generating 25% of the island’s electricity.

The Hermanos Díaz petroleum refinery is capable of processing 74,000 barrels of crude oil daily, though it remained idle for years after the onset of the Special Period of the ‘90s.

A classic example of unrealistic industrial investments of the Soviet era was the Celia Sánchez textile factory, designed to produce 95 million sq yards of textiles and 2,000 tons of thread per year. It was completed in the 1980s but never came close to full capacity.

Santiago de Cuba’s cement plant, opened in 1955, accounts for 11% of Cuba’s total cement production. In the 1980s, it produced 500,000 to 600,000 tons a year, reaching 616,000 tons in 1989. But by 1993, output had declined to 280,000 tons. This plant is now idle.

Other industries include a brewery, six rum distilleries, one of Cuba’s largest wheat mills, a dairy plant and a large prefab plant.

TOURISM

Santiago de Cuba lags well behind other provinces when it comes to tourism. At present, the province has only 1,834 rooms in 21 properties, accounting for 3.1% of the island’s lodging capacity.

In 2011, tourism yielded $24.7 million in revenues, or only 1.1% of Cuba’s total making tourism worth less than even the province’s deplorable sugar harvest that year. And hotel occupancy averages only 21%.

It seems unlikely that the province will see the development of large hubs in the style of Cayo Coco or Cayo Largo, but the scenic southern shore of the Sierra Maestra could be the ground for a number of less ambitious hotel and resort development projects.

The city of Santiago de Cuba itself with its charming colonial zone set against green mountains at the edge of the Caribbean Sea has the potential to attract thousands of visitors from abroad. But the lack of basic services, combined with lingering damage from Hurricane Sandy, make this likelihood seem like an impossible dream for now.

INFRASTRUCTURE

Santiago de Cuba’s provincial highway system reaches all key economic centers and settlements, but roads are narrow, twisting and reportedly in very poor condition while railroad service is deplorable.

The two-lane old Central Highway and the Central Railroad are Santiago de Cuba’s main links with the rest of the country.

Construction on the National Highway was stopped more than 20 years ago, a few miles from the city of Santiago de Cuba.

The port of Santiago de Cuba is the island’s second-largest, with 13 docks and 2,025 meters of berthing space. Its versatile facilities allow the handling of 10.5 million metric tons of dry cargo per year, including 450,000 tons of sugar annually in the 1980s, and six million tons of liquids. Its warehouse capacity exceeds 60,000 sq meters (645,000 sq feet).

Antonio Maceo International Airport, south of Santiago de Cuba, gave up most of its significance to other Cuban facilities as tourism became a leading economic activity.

The international airports serving Vara-dero, Cayo Coco and Cayo Largo have all grown to become major hubs, while Santiago de Cuba’s airport which handles mostly domestic traffic has stagnated. Its nominal capacity of 600 passengers per hour is well above the airport’s current traffic volumes.