Shadows and Legends of Pinar del Rio, Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – Pinar del Rio, where the mogote hills rise like sentinels and tobacco ripens in the mist, is home to an invisible heritage that passes down through generations: its legends. Although often associated with rural oral tradition, many of these stories have reached urban or semi-urban contexts, adapting to new settings without losing their power.
These narratives embody collective fears, moral warnings passed down through words and experience. They are not just tales to scare children. I remember with nostalgia those nights in the 1990s when we cousins would gather around the light of a lantern, and someone would ask for a scary story. My grandfather knew the best ones—his voice anointed them with magic—and at the end of each story, there was always a lesson.
One of the most well-known legends is La Luz de Vueltabajo—the Light of Vueltabajo (Pinar del Rio). It’s described as a luminous sphere that floats over rural paths or the edges of solitary farms and is said to appear at dusk, leading the unsuspecting into the woods before suddenly vanishing.
Researchers like Jose M. Fernandez, in his book Myths and Legends of Western Cuba (2002), have collected numerous testimonies about this apparition. Some people associate it with the soul of a slave unjustly killed or with guardian spirits of buried treasures. The tale seems to function both as a warning against curiosity and as a symbol of spiritual disorientation.
Then there’s the story of The Headless Horseman of San Juan y Martínez, which dates back to colonial times. According to locals, near an abandoned farm, the galloping of a horse with no rider can sometimes be heard at night. Those who have seen it say that when it finally appears, the rider has no head.
This local version of the European myth has been reinterpreted through Pinareño oral tradition. It’s tied to a former landowner who was cruel and was killed by his slaves. Anthropologist Lazaro Prieto, in 2009, mentioned similar cases in his study of fantastic traditions in western Cuba. He emphasized how these figures serve as representations of poetic justice—those who committed abuses in life are condemned to wander for eternity.
Another widely known legend in the region is The Woman of the Cuyaguateje River. This story is deeply rooted in the communities near this important waterway. According to tradition, at nightfall, a woman dressed in white can be seen walking along the river. Sometimes she cries; other times, she calls out to men with a distressed voice, and those who approach to help her disappear.
Researcher Lissette González, in her book Mysterious Cuba: Chronicles of the Fantastic (2015), suggests that this figure is related to the Mesoamerican La Llorona. She sees it as representing pain, loss, and the threat of misunderstood femininity. At the same time, it serves as a warning to those who underestimate the dangers of the river or the power of the unknown.
Beyond the fear they may inspire, these legends are part of an intangible heritage of great value. They encapsulate historical fears: slavery, class violence, or divine punishment. The Provincial Center for Books and Literature in Pinar del Rio holds an archive of many of these traditions, collected by cultural promoters and storytellers between 1990 and 2010. In this age of digital information overload, these oral stories remain powerful vehicles of memory, Cuban identity, and our roots.
I wish I could turn back time to those nights when my grandfather would tell us about the light he sometimes saw floating over the coffee fields, or the time he was crossing a stream and heard a ghostly voice calling his name, or how in the palm grove of his farm there was a mark bearing Bermudez’s signature, and if you were brave enough to say his name three times, a specter would appear to grant you a wish.
And here I am—Fabiana, the skeptic—tired of this gloomy routine, of mosquitoes, shortages, and blackouts, searching for those things in Cuba that are still beautiful, trying to connect with that dimension of the world that isn’t ruled by logic, but by wonder.
Read more from the diary of Fabiana del Valle here on Havana Times.