Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country in the Caribbean. It comprises the eponymous main island as well as 4,195 islands, islets, and cays. Situated at the convergence of the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean, Cuba is located east of the Yucatán Peninsula, south of both Florida and the Bahamas, west of Hispaniola, and north of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Havana is the largest city and capital. Cuba is the third-most populous country in the Caribbean after Haiti and Dominican Republic, with about 10 million inhabitants. It is the largest country in the Caribbean by area. Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America.
Cuba was inhabited as early as the 4th millennium BC, with the Guanahatabey and Taíno peoples present at the time of Spanish colonization in the 15th century. Cuba remained part of the Spanish Empire until the Spanish–American War of 1898, after which it was occupied by the United States and gained independence in 1902. A 1933 coup toppled the democratically elected government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada and began a long period of military influence, particularly by Fulgencio Batista. In 1940 Cuba implemented a new constitution, but mounting political unrest culminated in the 1952 Cuban coup d'état by Batista. His autocratic government was overthrown in January 1959 by the 26th of July Movement during the Cuban Revolution. That revolution established communist rule under the leadership of Fidel Castro. The country under Castro was a point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into nuclear war.
During the 1970s through the late 1980s, Cuba intervened in numerous conflicts in support of anti-colonial and Marxist governments or movements across Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. According to a CIA declassified report, Cuba had received $33 billion in Soviet aid by 1984. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced a severe economic downturn in the 1990s, known as the Special Period. In 2008, Castro retired after 49 years; Raúl Castro was elected his successor. Raúl retired as president of the Council of State in 2018, and Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected president by the National Assembly following parliamentary elections. Raúl retired as First Secretary of the Communist Party in 2021, and Díaz-Canel was elected thereafter, becoming Cuba's first leader to have been born after the Cuban Revolution.
Cuba is a socialist state in which the role of the Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Cuba has an authoritarian government wherein political opposition is prohibited. Censorship is extensive, and independent journalism is repressed; Reporters Without Borders has characterized Cuba as one of the worst countries for press freedom. Cuba is a founding member of the UN, G77, NAM, OACPS, ALBA, and OAS. Since 1959, Cuba has regarded the U.S. military presence in Guantánamo Bay as illegal.
Cuba has one of the world's few planned economies, and its economy is dominated by tourism and the exports of skilled labor, sugar, tobacco, and coffee. Cuba has historically—before and during communist rule—performed better than other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean on several socioeconomic indicators, such as literacy, infant mortality, and life expectancy. According to a 2012 study, Cuba is the only country in the world to meet the conditions of sustainable development put forth by the WWF. Cuba has a universal health care system that provides free medical treatment to all Cuban citizens, although challenges include low salaries for doctors, poor facilities, poor provision of equipment, and the frequent absence of essential drugs.
A 2023 study by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights estimated that 88% of the population lives in extreme poverty. According to the World Food Programme of the United Nations, rationed food meets only a fraction of daily nutritional needs for many Cubans, leading to health issues. Ongoing since 1960, the United States embargo against Cuba stands as one of the longest-running trade and economic measures in bilateral relations in history.
Etymology
Historians believe the name Cuba comes from the Taíno language; however, its derivation is unknown. Cuba may be translated either as 'where fertile land is abundant', or 'great place'.Another hypothesis on the name's origin is that the island was named after the town of Cuba, Portugal, supported by those who believe that Christopher Columbus was Portuguese.
History
Pre-Columbian era
Humans first settled Cuba around 6,000 years ago, descending from migrations from northern South America or Central America. The arrival of humans on Cuba is associated with extinctions of the island's native fauna, particularly its endemic sloths. The Arawakan-speaking ancestors of the Taíno people arrived in the Caribbean in a separate migration from South America around 1,700 years ago. Unlike the previous settlers of Cuba, the Taíno extensively produced pottery and engaged in intensive agriculture. The earliest evidence of the Taíno people on Cuba dates to the 9th century. Descendants of the first settlers of Cuba persisted on the western part of the island until Columbian contact, where they were recorded as the Guanahatabey people, who lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.Spanish colonization and rule (1492–1898)
landed on Cuba on 27 October 1492. Columbus claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain and named it Isla Juana after John, Prince of Asturias.File:DiegoVelazquezCuellar.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, conquistador of Cuba
In 1511 the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa. Other settlements followed, including San Cristobal de la Habana, founded in 1514 and then in 1519, which later became the capital. The Taíno were forced to work under the encomienda system, which resembled the feudal system in medieval Europe. Within a century, the Taíno faced high incidence of mortality from multiple factors—primarily Eurasian infectious diseases to which they had no acquired immunity, aggravated by the harsh conditions of the repressive colonial subjugation. In 1529, a measles outbreak killed two-thirds of those few indigenous individuals who had previously survived smallpox.
On 18 May 1539, conquistador Hernando de Soto departed from Havana with some 600 followers on an extensive expedition through the Southeastern United States in search of gold, treasure, fame, and power. On 1 September 1548, Gonzalo Perez de Angulo was appointed governor of Cuba. He arrived in Santiago de Cuba on 4 November 1549 and declared the liberty of the indigenous population. He became Cuba's first permanent governor, residing in Havana, and he built the first church made of masonry in Cuba.
By 1570, most residents of Cuba had a mixture of Spanish, African, and Taíno heritages. Cuba developed slowly and, unlike the plantation islands of the Caribbean, had a diversified agriculture. Most importantly, the colony developed as an urbanized society that primarily supported the Spanish colonial empire. By the mid-18th century, there were 50,000 slaves on the island. Estimates suggest that between 1790 and 1820, some 325,000 Africans were imported to Cuba as slaves, which was four times the amount that had arrived between 1760 and 1790.
In 1812, the Aponte slave rebellion took place, but it was ultimately suppressed. The population in 1817 was 630,980. The population in 1841 was 1,007,624, of whom 425,521 were black slaves, 418,291 were white.
By the 19th century, the practice of coartacion had developed. With a shortage of white labor, blacks dominated urban industries to such an extent that when whites in large numbers came to Cuba in the middle of the 19th century, they were unable to displace black workers. A system of diversified agriculture, with small farms and fewer slaves, served to supply the cities with produce and other goods.
In the 1820s, when the rest of Spain's empire in Latin America rebelled and formed independent states, Cuba remained loyal to Spain. Its economy was based on serving the empire. By 1860, Cuba had 213,167 free people of color.
Independence movements
Full independence from Spain was the goal of a rebellion in 1868 led by planter Carlos Manuel de Céspedes. De Céspedes, a sugar planter, freed his slaves to fight with him for an independent Cuba. On 27 December 1868, he issued a decree condemning slavery in theory—but accepting it in practice—and declaring free any slaves whose masters presented them for military service. The 1868 rebellion resulted in a prolonged conflict known as the Ten Years' War. The Cuban rebels were joined by former Dominican colonial officers and volunteers from Canada, Colombia, France, Mexico, the United States, and Chinese indentured servants, but lacked support from wealthy planters and the majority of slaves.The United States declined to recognize the new Cuban government, although many European and Latin American nations did. In 1878, the Pact of Zanjón ended the conflict, with Spain promising greater autonomy to Cuba. In 1879–80, Cuban patriot Calixto García attempted to start another war known as the Little War but failed to receive enough support. Slavery in Cuba was abolished in 1875, with the process completed by 1886. Exiled dissident José Martí founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party in New York City in 1892. The party aimed to achieve Cuban independence from Spain. In 1895, Martí traveled to San Fernando de Monte Cristi and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic to join the efforts of Máximo Gómez. Martí recorded his political views in the Manifesto of Montecristi. Fighting against the Spanish army began in Cuba on 24 February 1895, and Martí arrived in April. Martí was killed in the Battle of Dos Rios on 19 May 1895. His death immortalized him as Cuba's national hero.
File:Human remains in Cuba.jpg|thumb|Human remains from the Cuban War of Independence after the Spanish reconcentration policy, 1898
Around 200,000 Spanish troops outnumbered the much smaller rebel army, which relied mostly on guerrilla and sabotage tactics. The Spaniards began a campaign of suppression. General Valeriano Weyler, the military governor of Cuba, herded the rural population into what he called reconcentrados, described by international observers as "fortified towns". These are often considered the prototype for 20th-century concentration camps. Between 200,000 and 400,000 Cuban civilians died from starvation and disease in the Spanish concentration camps, numbers verified by the Red Cross and United States Senator Redfield Proctor, a former Secretary of War. American and European protests against Spanish conduct on the island followed. The U.S. battleship USS Maine was sent to protect American interests, but soon after its arrival, it exploded in the Havana Harbor and sank quickly, killing nearly three-quarters of the crew. The cause and responsibility for the ship's sinking remained unclear after a board of inquiry. Popular opinion in the U.S., fueled by active yellow press, concluded that the Spanish were to blame and demanded action. Spain and the United States declared war on each other in late April 1898.