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The island of Cuba has been domiciled for around several thousand years by Amerindian peoples named the Taino and Ciboney. The Taino were known to be mostly farmers while the Ciboney were hunter-gatherers. The moniker Cuba in fact is derived from the Taino word cubanacan, which means "a central place”. Christopher Columbus sighted the island during his first sail of discovery on 24 October 1492, and at once laid claim it for Spain.
Spain possessed the island of Cuba for 388 years, ruled by the governor of Havana. It had an economic base of orchard agribusiness and main exportations of refined sugar, java and tobacco to European Community and in the future to North America. Brits took over the island in 1762, but gave it to Spain the following year. Like most of the Spanish Empire, a small land-owning elite of colonists had all the social and economic force. They were attended to by a universe of small farmers, laborers and slaves.
Many architectural masterpieces constructed in the period of Spanish rule still stand nowadays. An excellent case is the Catedral de San Cristobal, Havana. During the 1820s, when the rest of Spain’s empire in South America renegaded and seceeded, Cuba stayed loyal, although a select few pushed for independence. Partly because concerns of a slave rising (as had came about in Haiti) if the Spanish retreated, partly because the prosperity of Cuban colonists counted on their export trade to Europe, and partially because Cuba feared the rising power of the United States more than they disliked Spanish colonial rule.
Due to the fact that Cuba is a bare 90 miles from the United States has had a wakeless influence on the nations evolution. Politicians in the south planned the island’s annexation as a means of bolstering the pro-slavery forces in the U.S. throughout the early 1900’s. In 1848 a pro-annexationist uprising was foiled after various failed invasion atemps from Florida proved fruitless. After that the United States tried to buy Cuba from Spain but was always declined.
Rural impoverishment in Spain led to a real Spanish expatriation to Cuba. Among those inbound were the parents of Fidel Castro. During the 1890s pro-independence agitation revived, fueled by rancor of the limitations brought down on Cuban trade by Spain and hostility to Spain’s increasingly tyrannous and unskilled administration of Cuba. On 15 July 1895 revolt erupted and the independence party, led by Tomas Estrada Palma and the poet Jose Marti, proclaimed Cuba an independent republic. Marti was killed soon thereafter and has become Cuba’s unquestioned national hero.
This short paper can’t possibly address the huge chronicle that is Cuba. I have named various excellent books at the end of this report. You can buy them all at Amazon or your local bookstore.
Cuba: A New History by Richard Gott
The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Latin America Readers) by Aviva Chomsky, Barry Carr, and Pamela Maria Smorkaloff
This is Cuba: An Outlaw Culture Survives by Ben Corbett
Inside Cuba by Julio Cesar Perez Hernandez, Angelika Taschen, and Giani Bosso
