España. Ministerio de Cultura. Archivo General de Indias. MP-Santo Domingo, 103. Plano de la Costa de Cuba, ca. 1690s.
This coarse and almost abstract military chart is one of the few extant maps of this region from the 17th century. Its purpose is to chart, or rather diagram, the fortification system covering the central garrison and capital city of Santiago de Cuba, here labelled merely as "Cuba" and marked with the icon of a castle. El Cobre is portrayed as part of the imperial military regime deployed in this region where it operates as a buffer to the main garrison. In former decades El Cobre had been an important mining center in the region, but after the abandonement of mining production it had turned into a village settlement of some 500-700 royal slaves and free people of color in a still widely depopulated Oriente region. The Spanish Crown tapped El Cobre's semi-enslaved residents as a labor pool for the construction and maintenance of its fortification projects, as settler militias in the case of enemy attack, and as centinels in the post of Guaycabon (noted in the extreme right side of the map). The chart roughly sketches topographical features of military significance such as the main harbor, inlets and offshore islands [caios], elevations, and in a note indicates the distance of forested terrain (5 leagues or ~ 7 miles) to the capital. The map's cartographical crudeness and its small gestures at ornamentation displayed in the delicate touches of blue coloring and in the icon of approaching ships give it a not unappealing air of "naive" (cartographical) art.
