Latin America 2018 - Day 52. El Valle de los Ingenios

Ingenio is the name in Spanish for a sugar cane plantation (it also means “ingenuity”, which is from which the word ingeniería comes from, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this narrative). The broad valley of the Río Agabama, Cuba’s largest river in terms of discharge, on the southern flank of the Sierra del Escambray, was the perfect setting for the growth of sugar cane, so in the late 1800’s and most of the 1900’s it became one of the main sugar production centers of the island. A train line connected the different ingenious and my plan today was to take the train up the valley to go see what I could see.

At 9 am I walked the dozen blocks between my residence and the train station, only to find out that the train engine had died a couple of weeks ago, and was not expected to be repaired for yet a few more weeks. A small number of fellow tourists were milling around, sharing my disappointment, but fortunately there were a couple of taxis on standby, and in no time whatsoever I organized another couple to create a colectivo to go see the valley.

Our first stop was at a vista point from which we got great views of the wide valley and the Escambray mountains in the background. From there we went to the Ingenio San Isidro de los Destiladeros, where the ruins of one of the sugar mills are used as a museum to introduce visitors to the activities of the old sugar mills. In these mills, the cane juice was reduced by boiling it in big cauldrons down to a heavy molasse. Once the molasse was at its sweet point, it was transferred to wooden bats and stirred vigorously as the sugar started to crystallize. The mix of sugar crystals and residual molasse was then packed into beehive-shaped earthen jars with a narrow bottom hole closed with sugar cane reeds, and allowed to sit for 50 days dripping molasses and leaving behind a loaf of pan de azucar or piloncillo. Note: I sighted the elusive Brown Grouse of the Ingenios.

In the third stop at Manaca Iznaga we visited a tower left from one of the large ingenious, as well as a beautifully reconstructed manor house that is now used as a tourist restaurant. The short walk between the train station (where we had parked) and the tower was lined with hundreds of snow-white table clothes, lovingly decorated by local artisans. I, of course, moved through them like a ship passing in the night. The tower must have been a good 40 m high, and from it the plantation manager used to control the slaves that worked the fields, as well as the activities of recollection and loading unto rail cars. I looked at the large number of steps and decided that my tired legs didn’t require the additional stress. Too bad because my travel buddies went up and spent forever up there. In the meantime I tasted a delicious glass of freshly-pressed sugar cane juice, and indulged in a bunch of mamoncillos. This strange fruit is kind of a national pastime in this part of Cuba. They are rounded fruits, maybe the size of very large grapes, with a resilient skin and a sweet interior. I believe they are related to lychees, but are green rather than red. The way to eat then is to pierce the skin with the edge of your nail, and then pop them pen at the time you suck the sweet gooey inside. They do have a large stone, so after sucking the good part you can see how far you can spit the stone.

Our final stop was at the Central FNTA, which was the sugar processing plant built in the 1930’s and finally decommissioned in 2004. The plant is now a museum (although most of the machinery was sold out when the plant folded. One of the workers has been retained as guide, and he gave us a very interesting explanation of the process of sugar refining. I am not sure I can reproduce the whole process, but I will mention that to produce modern-quality sugar it is important to keep close control of the crystallization processes of nucleation and growth. The sweet spot is when many nuclei of sugar form simultaneously; if the temperature can be held at this point, then many of the nuclei can grow into sugar crystals suspended in the molasses (a little like crystals form and grow in a cooling magma). If the temperature drops too fast, then the nuclei cannot grow enough and the crystals barely grow (like in an obsidian) and the batch is lost. If the cooling rate is too slow, then a few crystals grow to unacceptably large proportions and the rest become runts (like in a porphyritic rock). Under the right conditions of temperature and cooling many nuclei form, and all of them have a chance to grow (like in an aplite) into marketable sugar crystals. At the end, once the crystallization has reached the right point, the mix is poured into a centrifuge, and the residual molasse is separated by filter pressing (like in the magnetite ores of Kirunavaara!).