A Near-Naked ‘Healing’ At El Chorro De Maita, Cuba

El Chorro de Maita Museum is a small but interesting museum where people holidaying in Holguin’s beach resorts can spend a few hours learning about the Cuban people’s past. You know, if you get sick of Mojitos and sunshine? I’d recommend hiring a classic American car for the ride there.

Visiting a museum in Cuba: El Chorro de Maita, Holguin

Within El Chorro de Maita, there’s a kind of creepy but very educational Aboriginal Museum and a couple of round huts that you can walk around while listening to a fascinating talk about the Spanish colonisation and rituals that shaped life in Cuba in years gone by. I was so busy learning that I didn’t realise that the figures around the sides of the huts were real humans, then I got dragged into a recreation of a traditional ‘healing’. I definitely didn’t expect to get hit repeatedly with a branch by a naked man when I set off to El Chorro de Maita to play tourist for a day!

This isn’t usually my ‘thing’ but it was actually a highly educational day and I’d recommend El Chorro de Maita to anyone interested in delving into Cuba’s history. If you want to learn more about present day local life in Cuba, however, you should pay Boca de Sama Village a visit.

The Aboriginal Cemetery

At the entrance of the Aboriginal cemetery, you’re greeted with the skeleton of a baby girl, displayed under a glass pane in the floorboards. Not the most gracious welcome. The building is a square room built upon the recently discovered burial ground of the indigenous Tainos people, who were mainly farmers and potters. Inside, a balcony runs round a pit in the floor which is filled with the bones of 62 people, all in different positions.

The various ways people have been buried shows that the Chorro de Maita cemetery dates back to the 13th century, when humans first inhabited Cuba. The different bones indicate the ethnic variance present in Cuba, as there are buried mestizos, and African bones. It’s thought that some of these people were brought to Cuba to work as slaves, which provides a vision of early colonial Cuba that was until recently undiscovered. There are still mysteries surrounding some of the artifacts and skeletons found at the archaeological site.

While we gazed into the bone pit, we listened to a talk about Cuba’s colonisation. I was horrified to hear that many Cuban people actually committed suicide because Spanish colonisers were forcing them to become Christian.

Inside El Chorro de Maita Cultural Village

Opposite the Tainos cemetery is a cultural village, where you can learn more about Cuba’s history through representations of the Arawak Tainos people’s daily lives. There were sculptures gathered in various scenes from the past, depicting the meditation rituals that shaped the lives of native Cuban Indians before colonisation.

We saw models of children bearing heavy chunks of wood strapped to their heads. The guide explained that examinations of skeletons from the past suggest that flat foreheads were considered attractive, so children were made to wear these excruciating contraptions for two years with the result of warped bone structures.

I found it fascinating yet harrowing to learn that body deformation has been present in culture for such a long time. I wonder if one day we’ll see Hollywood’s plastics lusting after flat foreheads? I guess with Botox, they’re halfway there.

At the final scene, we found ourselves in a round hut and we were told a story about the country’s traditional healers. They had seriously stressful roles in society. Families were entitled to beat them to death if they failed to cure the suffering person, and they had to induce vomit to cleanse themselves in order to perform the healing.

Gross.

My healing from a crazy naked guy

Suddenly, the silent figures that had lurked in the shadows jumped to life, and there was a lot of chanting and thigh slapping. Were they doing the Haka? I must have looked unnerved, because I was selected to act as the dummy in their ‘healing’.

I was made to lay on a table while semi naked men stood over me, hit me with a branch and conversed loudly in a different language about what seemed to be the problem.

There’s a sentence I never thought I’d type.

After plenty of giggling on my part and a small scream when the healers pretended to puke on me, I was diagnosed as ‘hungry’ and we were sent off for dinner, but not before a quick dance and chanting session with a naked lady. All in a day’s work.

Lunch was roasted pork in a tomato sauce with rice and banana chips, plus an ice cold can of Cristal. Just what I needed after my ‘healing’.

I left El Chorro de Maita a little bemused but ultimately thrilled at all I had learned about Holguin’s history. I have to admit that I was clueless about the Spanish invasion and the ways of life in the country long ago. And who else can say they went to Cuba and got ‘healed’ by a crazy guy with a visible package?

Find out what else there is to do in Holgiun

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