First railway in Latin America (Havana–Bejucal)
Primer ferrocarril de Latinoamérica (La Habana–Bejucal)
- Date
- 1837 · confidence high
- Place
- Havana, Cuba
- Credited to
- Real Junta de Fomento (Claudio Martínez de Pinillos, Count of Villanueva)
- Field
- Movement
What it is
A line of about 27 km between Havana and Bejucal, opened on 19 November 1837 to carry sugarcane and sugar. It was the first railway in Latin America and in the Spanish empire, eleven years before the Iberian one.
The first section (Havana–Bejucal) opened in 1837; the line was extended to Güines in 1838. The first railway in the Iberian Peninsula was Barcelona–Mataró (1848).
What it led to
- Cuba's sugar railway network
- A model of the export-serving railway in Latin America
- Expansion of the slave plantation economy