Cuban Flag Wallpapers
The island of Cuba has been lived in for over several thousand years by Amerindian peoples known as the Taino and Ciboney. The Taino were known to be mostly farmers while the Ciboney were hunter-gatherers. The epithet Cuba in fact is derived from the Taino word cubanacan, which means "a central place”. Christopher Columbus sighted the island during his most important voyage of discovery on 24 October 1492, and straightaway claimed it for Spain.
Spain ruled the island of Cuba for 388 years, governed by the governor of Havana. It had an economic base of grove agribusiness and main exports of refined sugar, java and tobacco to Europe and later to North America. Brits conquered the island in 1762, but delivered it to Spain the following year. Like most of the Spanish Empire, a modest land-owning elite of colonists controlled all the social and economic might. They were attended to by a universe of modest farmers, laborers and slaves.
Many architectural masterpieces built during Spanish rule still stand nowadays. An first-class case is the Catedral de San Cristobal, Havana. During the 1820s, when the rest of Spain’s conglomerate in South America renegaded and seceeded, Cuba stayed loyal, though a few crusaded for independence. Partly because concerns of a slave rebellion (as had happened in Haiti) if the Spanish retreated, partly because the prosperity of Cuban settlers depended on their exportation trade to Europe, and partially because Cuba dreaded the ascending power of the United States more than they disliked Spanish colonial regulation.
Due to the fact that Cuba is a bare 90 miles from the United States has had a unsounded influence on the nations growth. Politicians in the south diagrammed the island’s annexation as a means of supporting the pro-slavery forces in the U.S. throughout the early 1900’s. In 1848 a pro-annexationist revolt was defeated after a few failed invasion atemps from Florida proved fruitless. After that the United States tried to buy Cuba from Spain but was universally turned away.
Rural impoverishment in Spain led to a major Spanish emigration to Cuba. Among those inbound were the parents of Fidel Castro. During the 1890s pro-independence excitement revived, fueled by bitterness of the limitations enforced on Cuban trade by Spain and hostility to Spain’s more and more tyrannical and bungling governance of Cuba. On 15 July 1895 revolt broke out and the independence party, led by Tomas Estrada Palma and the poet Jose Marti, extolled Cuba an sovereign republic. Marti was killed briefly thereafter and has become Cuba’s undisputed national hero.
This abbreviated article can’t possibly address the vast chronicle that is Cuba. I have numbered a few first-class books at the closing of this website. You can locate them all at Amazon or your local bookshop.
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
