The current territories of the municipality of Florencia originally belonged (16th century) to the village of Sancti Spíritus, which had been founded in 1514. The first references to the official settlement of Spaniards in this area date back to the 16th century, when on July 7, 1523, the city council of the town of Sancti Spiritus demarcated Marroquí for Doña María de Quintero, a resident of Puerto Príncipe.
The Spanish colonizers using the trails traced by the aborigines as guides carried out the exploration of the area. The first roads were made through these trails, and at some important points such as crossroads, permanent drinking water places, rivers with the possibility of having gold, places of fertile land, the first houses were built for settlement purposes in the 16th century. This is how Marroquí, Guadalupe, Cacarratas and other places arise.
The primitive layout of the population groups of the municipality responded to the custom of building houses in front of and along busy roads, and from these nuclei, the population spread out towards more intricate places for purposes of agricultural, livestock and forestry use, of the space that was populating.
In this territory, there was no development of the sugar industry. There were only a few mills in Guadeloupe and Morocco, which emerged in 1836, which were destroyed during the War of Independence. The low growth of this industry did not encourage the introduction of slave labor forces of black Africans in large numbers.
The main economic activities of this stage were:
- Large and small cattle.
- Tobacco cultivation.
- The production and sale of honey, wax and bait.
In the 16th century, this area belonged to the Local Party in Morón, which in turn was subordinated to the jurisdiction of Sancti Spirits. According to the census carried out in 1899, the total population of the region was 2,627 inhabitants, of which 1,073 of them corresponded to the Marroquí neighborhood, and 1,554 more to the Guadalupe vicinity.
In 1923, the brothers Mauricio and Bautista Cepero García bought a plot of land on Manuel Cepero Gil`s farm Ojo de Agua, where they built the first store on the site. A house made of wood and zinc, which they established to sell products to the builders of the Morón-Santa Clara railroad, which was already approaching the peasants of the existing ones.
In 1924, the railroad arrived in the Guadalupe neighborhood, establishing a station on the Ojo de Agua farm, on the land that Manuel Cepero Gil had sold to the Fomento de Chambas Company, which in turn sold plots and lots to build houses and other real estate.
The station, at the suggestion of Mr. Antonio Docal Hernández, chief engineer of the construction of the railway, was given the name of Florencia; it is said because the beauty of the landscape of this place reminded him of the Italian city, cradle of the Renaissance.
On September 5, 1927, it was agreed to declare the town of Florencia, in the Guadalupe neighborhood, of the Morón municipality, as an urbanized area. On December 15, 1927, the president Gerardo Machado Morales, on a tour of the Northern Railway of Cuba, leaves it officially inaugurated.
Together with the railway, electricity reaches Florencia. It was the Viñas Jardí family that established this service and did so through a plant that worked during the early hours of the night. Previously, in 1920, Viñas Jardí had already installed another similar plant in Tamarindo.
The advantages that the railway brought to the area constituted a starting point for the rapid development of its economy. This was appreciable in not only the typological evolution of the incipient town, but also in the quick flourishing of industrial and grocery stores, bars, cafeterias. It is known that in 1928 the first clothing store appeared, owned by Fermín Fernández, later seconded by other shops and storefronts that attracted new inhabitants. These advances were given, fundamentally, by the increase in the entry of money that meant the greater and better commercialization of agricultural production in the area. Thus, for example, livestock, fruits, viands and vegetables, especially tomatoes, were rubles of notable growth, since a large part of their productions were destined for sale in other areas of Cuba and for export.
Motivated by the boom in the tomato selection and processing workshops in the area, "Sansó Ribot y Cia" Firm arrived in Florencia in 1939 and established the first tomato puree factory with its respective ripening process. In 1945, another tomato puree factory began his productions, Florencia Industria SA, owned by José Pérez Días and Antonio Fernández Leira.
During those years, the cultivation of tobacco development also increased, mainly due to the establishment in this area of dozens of Canarias immigrants who dedicated themselves with great knowledge and great will to this hard work. This prompted the emergence of selected tobacco, thereby providing employment opportunities, mainly to women, and greater money entering the territory.
In the 1940s, the Agricultural and Mercantile Bank of Florencia emerged, which was the first bank in the territory. Already at that stage, the development of the town of Florencia was superior, both in terms of population density and in terms of urban development, to the old Marroquí and Guadalupe, and to the prosperous Tamarindo. With the administrative political division of 1976 in which the province of Ciego de Ávila was established, the municipalities of Tamarindo, Marroquí and Florencia, which belonged to the Chamba region, were merged to form the current municipality of Florencia.
The territorial surface of this municipality is 286 km 2 and its population is 19,307 inhabitants. Of these, 9,314 correspond to the female sex and 9,993 to the male, which is equivalent to approximately 80 inhabitants per square kilometer (data from the 2012 census).
The municipality is made up of various zones, of which the towns of Florencia and Tamarindo are the ones with the highest levels of urbanization. Moroccan and Guadeloupe follow them. Other important points are Abras Grandes, El Aguacate, Las Grullas, Las Pojas, Limpios Grandes, La Cadena, and La Vega. There are four popular councils: Florencia, Tamarindo, Guadalupe and Marroquí.
The municipality of Florencia is identified by some symbols. The most deeply rooted is the tobacco leaf because this has been its most important economic line during part of its history; it is also identified by its hills and its beautiful landscapes, with bell peppers and tomatoes. (Martinez, 1997)
Due to its topographical characteristics, it is considered a mountainous territory, with steep slopes, since its topography is broken by 62%, Florencia is located in the northern heights or Sierra de Jatibonico, and its highest point is the hill of El Merino with 408 meters above sea level.
The presence of abundant rivers and the topography of the territory, determined the construction in Florencia of the largest water reservoir in the province of Ciego de Ávila, which had important repercussions on the agricultural production of the municipality, both for having occupied part of its fertile lands and by the displacement of the rural population to the urban sector. As positive effects, it generated a renewable energy source, a reserve of water resources and generated possibilities for the development of aquaculture.
In general, the territory of Florencia has a history in its natural environment as a provider of materials and energy, an issue that reverts to economic activity and the well-being of the population, a fundamental aspect for an evaluation of sustainable development. Another important precedent has been the presence of the railway, which boosted its economic and social development and the commercial outlet of its agricultural production. The construction of a water reservoir determined important changes in the last twenty years, some positive and others negative in relation to potential sustainable development.