Camilo Cienfuegos (Santa Cruz del Norte)

Milton Hershey, the famous American chocolatier and businessman, visited Cuba in 1916.[3] Hershey decided to buy sugar plantations and mills in Cuba to supply the growing Pennsylvania-based Hershey Company.[3] He built an adjoining town for the workers and their families to live, which he named Hershey.[3]

The village grew to 160 homes and had high standards of living a public school, medical clinic, stores, a movie theater and a golf course. There was also a baseball stadium where a team sponsored by The Hershey Company played home games.[3] The factory was one of the most productive sugar refineries in Cuba and Latin America.[3] The Hershey Company sold their holdings in Cuba in 1948.[3]

Hershey was renamed after the Cuban Revolution in honor of Camilo Cienfuegos.[4] The sugar refinery was nationalized, wages were lower and the baseball stadium was demolished.[3] The mill was closed in 2002 under the pretense that the factory had become inefficient.

Residents still refer to the town as Hershey (pronounced as AIR-see) and Hershey signs still hang at the town's train station.[3]

Hershey, located between the cities of Havana and Matanzas, is 3 km from Santa Cruz del Norte and the Atlantic coast. Other nearby villages are La Sierra, Jibacoa, San Antonio del Río Blanco and Loma de Travieso.

The village has a station on the main line of the Hershey Electric Railway, with a branch to Jaruco, and is 5 km from the "Vía Blanca" highway, that connects Havana to Varadero.

• Arcos de Canasí
• Bacunayagua
• Boca de Jaruco

Media related to Camilo Cienfuegos (Hershey) at Wikimedia Commons