Cuban Government Facts
The island of Cuba has been inhabited for over several thousand years by Amerindian peoples referred to 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 in the period of his first sail of discovery on 24 October 1492, and at once claimed 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 agriculture and main exportations of refined sugar, coffee and tobacco to Europe and in the future to North America. British people captured the island in 1762, but returned it to Spain the following year. Like most of the Spanish Empire, a small land-owning elect of colonists held all the social and economic force. They were attended to by a population of small farmers, laborers and slaves.
Many architectural masterpieces reconstructed in the period of Spanish rule still stand today. An excellent illustration is the Catedral de San Cristobal, Havana. During the 1820s, when the rest of Spain’s conglomerate in South America arose and seceeded, Cuba remained loyal, though a select few pressed for independence. Partly because concerns of a slave rebellion (as had occurred in Haiti) if the Spanish pulled away, partly because the prosperity of Cuban colonists counted on their exportation trade to Europe, and partially because Cuba feared the developing power of the United States more than they disliked Spanish colonial regulation.
Due to the fact that Cuba is a slim 90 miles from the United States has had a wakeless influence on the lands 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 rebellion 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 significant Spanish expatriation to Cuba. Among people inbound were the parents of Fidel Castro. During the 1890s pro-independence upheaval vivified, fueled by resentment of the restrictions imposed on Cuban trade by Spain and antagonism to Spain’s progressively tyrannical and incapable governance of Cuba. On 15 July 1895 insurrection erupted and the independence party, led by Tomas Estrada Palma and the poet Jose Marti, extolled Cuba an sovereign republic. Marti was killed shortly thereafter and has become Cuba’s undisputed national hero.
This short paper can’t possibly address the vast story that is Cuba. I have listed a few excellent books at the close of this report. 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
