Santiago de Cuba Province

This article deals with the Cuban province of Santiago de Cuba, established in 1975. For the same name, which existed until 1905, see Province Oriente .

Santiago de Cuba
Capital	Santiago de Cuba
surface	6,170 km²
Residents	1,049,084 (2012)
Population density	168.5 inhabitants / km²
ISO code	CU-13

Santiago de Cuba is a province in eastern Cuba . The capital is the city of the same name, Santiago de Cuba .

During the Spanish colonial period and until 1975, the province was the most important part of the old Oriente province . The province was the site of much fighting both during the Cuban War of Independence and in 1959 during the Cuban Revolution .

The province has an area of ​​6170 km². It borders on Granma Province to the west, Holguín to the north and Guantánamo to the east . The southern border of the province is the Caribbean Sea . It is home to 1,045,800 inhabitants, which corresponds to a population density of 169.5 per square kilometer. Seventy percent of people live in urban areas, which is slightly below the Cuban national average of 76 percent.

There are a total of 645 settlements in the province of Santiago, 36 of which are classified as urban . Only the cities of Santiago de Cuba, Palma Soriano and San Luis have more than 20,000 inhabitants.

Agriculture (bananas, cocoa and coffee), mining (iron, nickel) and tourism are the main sources of income for the province.

The highest representative of the state in the province is the First Secretary of the Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba , Lázaro Expósito (since April 2009).

geography

The relief of the province of Santiago consists to a large extent of high altitude and mountain regions. The Sierra Maestra with its peaks Pico Turquino (1974 m), Pico Cuba (1874 m) and Pico Suecia (1734 m) as well as the Sierra de La Gran Piedra, with the Gran Piedra (1226 m) as the highest elevation, make up a large part of the Territory of the province. Only around three percent of the province is less than 100 meters above sea level .

The province's primary water catchment area is the Río Cauto , which Santiago shares with three other provinces. Other important rivers are the Río Contramaestre with a length of 61 kilometers flowing north and the Río Baconao with a length of 33 kilometers flowing south.

The province of Santiago de Cuba is one of the hottest regions of Cuba in the flat areas. The average daily maximum temperatures are 32.2 ° C, the minimum daily temperatures average 22.1 ° C

media

In the province of Santiago de Cuba, the newspaper Sierra Maestra , which is the official organ of the Communist Party, appears once a week . The main regional radio station is CMKC Radio Revolución . There are also other smaller regional stations. With Tele Turquino there is a regional television station that broadcasts in the province on the national sister channel Tele Rebelde in a time slot.

Administrative division

The province of Santiago de Cuba is divided into the following nine municipalities :

Municipio	Inhabitants (2002)	Area (km²)
Contramaestre	103.830	610.3
Guamá	34,400	964.5
Mella	34,720	335.2
Palma Soriano	122,650	845.8
San Luis	87,880	76, .9
Santiago de Cuba	480,850	1024.0
Segundo Frente	39,620	540.2
Songo - La Maya	93,130	720.7
Tercer Frente	29,270	364.4

Web links

• Official website of the province
• Guia turistica de Santiago de Cuba-1 - Caracteristicas generales, geografia
• Sights and photos from the province of Santiago de Cuba

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Census 2012 (PDF; 257 kB) , ONE