The Huge
Headquarters of 28 columns
By Luis Miguel Quesada
Kindelán
Translated by Ernesto Gutiérrez Pino
On the shield of Las Tunas city it has been
written the sentence "Burn before slave", a
decision that we citizen from Las Tunas have
inherited since two centuries ago, when its
residents preferred to reduce to ashes houses
and constructions, before giving them to the
Spanish troops.
For this reason, it is difficult to find
vestiges of that epoch in the historical
downtown of the capital city of this province.
However, the walls of the old Cuartelón de 28
columnas (Huge Headquarters of 28 columns)
located on the square that at this moment
occupies the building of the Headquarters of the
Central Organization of CubanTrade Unions in the
province( its acronyms in Spanish CTC)and the
school center named José de Luz y Caballero
lasted during many years.
The above mentioned square was the place
chosen by the Spaniards to build a headquarters,
practically unassailable, where they
concentrated thousands of soldiers, due to the
strategic value of Las Tunas and the continuous
harassment of the mambisas forces(Cuban
patriotic forces which fought against the
Spanish colonialism).
Who was a child or a young in the 50´s he
will remember the wide esplanade of the Huge
Headquarters, surrounded by a thick wall which
can be seen nowadays when you pass by Lucas
Ortiz Street.
It was an ideal place to play baseball, to
ride bicycles or to see the circuses that
periodically visited the city and lifted their
canvas there.
The school center and the fiscal zone were
built there in that same period.Today an
enlarged building of the CTC occupies that place
and gradually it was disappearing the few thing
that remained of the Huge Headquarters of 28
columns, whose existence is only remembered
thanks to the memory of the most mature, and to
the drugstore located across the street from the
Headquarters of the CTC and which it is named by
the population as: El Cuartelón. (The Huge
Headquarters Drugstore)
