Article first published on my personal blog at HIVE. (Original Spanish)

Many stories are woven in the fields of Cuba. Some sound totally implausible, while others border on reason and popular wisdom, weaving a web of mysteries around them and feeding new legends and myths.

Perhaps one of the most deeply rooted legends in the popular imagination, especially in central Cuba, is the well-known Madre de Aguas. Many witnesses of her sighting swore to the grave the veracity of what they had seen and how, from that moment on, they were never the same people again.

As for the shape of the Madre de Aguas, we can see several descriptions, but all agree on something: a large snake with dark scales and horns on its forehead, several meters long and as thick as a palm. Other people assure that it is not only a wild animal, but that it has magical powers that range from transforming itself into a beautiful naked young woman with long hair and a hypnotizing gaze, making anyone who sees it fall into the rivers and drown, to being a blessing for the rivers where it lives, because wherever it decides to stay, the river will never dry up. They claim that it has the power to create the most terrifying whirlpools of water that can be seen in a river. Others, on the other hand, speak of the devouring appetite of this creature, saying that many cattle have disappeared after coming to drink water in the rivers where it lives.

Perhaps the most told story is that of the farmer Elías, an elderly man who lived on the outskirts of Sagua when, before it was a city, it was a town. Elías’ wife used to go to the river to fetch water or wash clothes every day, accompanied by her daughter. One of those days, after a torrential storm that had caused the river to rise, the woman was with her daughter, mashing her clothes against the stones, when she saw a yagua approaching. Without thinking, she tried to pull it out of the river, but her surprise was even greater when, under the yagua, an endless number of black scales ran and disappeared in a whirlpool. Such was the terror felt by the two women that they abandoned their clothes and headed for home. From that day on, Elías’ wife never spoke again and his daughter began to suffer from high fevers that would gradually end her life. Elías, in desperation, fell into madness. He walked up and down the riverbank in search of the creature, a fruitless search until old age made him unable to walk anymore and he spent his last days cursing the creature.

Note: A “yagua” is a part of the Cuban royal palm tree. It is a fibrous sheath that covers the base of the palm fronds. In the context of this story, it refers to a piece of this sheath floating in the river.

Cuba is, without a doubt, a place full of legends, but the oral tradition is disappearing little by little. With our grandparents go the last mysteries we have left, so I wanted to preserve this story on the web. I hope you enjoyed reading it; for me, it has been a pleasure to remember it and put it into words, although sometimes memory plays against me.

Thanks for making it this far. I appreciate all the comments and any suggestions. If you have heard this story, I would very much like you to share how it came to you. Best regards and have a nice day, see you next time!

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
I apologize if there are any grammatical errors, English is not my native language, I have tried to be as careful as possible.
All illustrations accompanying this post have been created with Copilot and are illustrative in nature.