Local Festivities. Review and current affairs

 Feast days recover strengths and soften the anguer... José Martí. 

A comprehensive approach to a community, necessarily require a study of its festivals because they abre the chance to manifest behaviors, beliefs and customs of that human and cultural conglomerate.

Guáimaro is a town that was founded in the late eighteenth century and was gradually assuming its own festivals and celebrations, before it reached the fullness , its people attended the already popular Sanjuanes principeños but the consolidation of a city space involved the emergence of parties, family first and then with social and religious who identified and identified Guaimaro .

The family gatherings were held in neighboring houses and adopted the name of festivals and revelry for these celebrations were sometimes hired musicians both the village and the travelers walked pass and had different motivations , that kind of celebration has remained with variations to the present context integrating now traditional festivals category.

The first festivals that were held in Guáimaro were conceived as converged fairs and various types of entertainment and they had as its background a business sense, these shows were scheduled to appear about the fifth decade of the nineteenth century and managed to attract to the village to much of the Creole elites of Bayamo -Manzanillo , Holguin and Puerto Principe.

Altogether with those fairs, various religious celebrations were established associated to holy patron and saints like St. Joseph and Immaculate Conception in Cascorro, Guáimaro to which were added the Fiestas de la Candelaria who became the second half of the nineteenth century a cozy festival .

From the still alive local festivals, without doubt, the most representative is the Feast of Diez de Abril associated with banked date of the local history it was the celebration in the village of the Assembly of the People of Cuba to draft and adopt the first Constitution of the Republic of Cuba in Arms.

April Feasts have their start on April 10^th, 1899 when a group of veterans of the war of independence decided to commemorate the event and supported by all the people drills , throwing fireworks, dances and feasts summon with roasted pigs and cows these parties called by that time April Orchestras and from April 1979 with a more comprehensive project in terms of art and literature while retaining its popular  essence and are named for mobilization Culture Week every year between 4 and 10 April it changes the rhythm of the city routine.

As an extension of the popular cultural celebrations in other towns of the municipality as Cascorro (June) Marti (January) and Palo Seco (December) there are also some other Cultural Days expected with the same enthusiasm of festivities.

If April Feasts (now week of culture ) are the most representative , or simply Agricultural Fairs are the most acclaimed Guáimaro by people because they are intertwined, the intrinsic sense of the local culture livestock and more open hedonistic purpose overflows and flows through its streets in each edition.

The festival shows and reflect the spirit and being in dialectical evolution of people so from the first cattle fair held here in 1939 to have experienced the same signification processes or changes but remains open in the popular imagination as roots, even when instead of fairs carnivals are organized and the simple guaimareño associates it with them and names them as carnival but not as fair.

San Juanes and then festivals carnivals has been host to some parties but never as April or Livestock Fairs. Other feasts such as Christmas, New Year´s eve have been and are connotations in the sociocultural environment of the territory to which are added the revolutionary process related celebrations like CDR parties, by July 26 or the first of January. Within the spectrum of festivals and traditional festivals moves a great spiritual wealth is also Contributing to local identity.