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The island of Cuba has been occupied 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 name 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 foremost ocean trip of discovery on 24 October 1492, and immediately laid claim it for Spain.
Spain possessed 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. British clutched the island in 1762, but returned it to Spain the following year. Like most of the Spanish Empire, a minute land-owning elect of settlers held all the social and economic force. They were served by a universe of modest farmers, laborers and slaves.
Many architectural masterpieces built during Spanish rule still stand today. An excellent illustration is the Catedral de San Cristobal, Havana. During the 1820s, when the rest of Spain’s empire in South America renegaded and seceeded, Cuba remained loyal, although a few crusaded for independence. Partly because fears of a slave rising (as had came about in Haiti) if the Spanish disengaged, partly because the prosperity of Cuban colonists depended on their export trade to Europe, and partly because Cuba dreaded the rising power of the United States more than they disliked Spanish colonial reign.
Due to the fact that Cuba is a slight 90 miles from the United States has had a wakeless influence on the lands growth. Politicians in the south planned the island’s annexation as a way of bolstering the pro-slavery forces in the U.S. throughout the early 1900’s. In 1848 a pro-annexationist uprising was foiled after many failed invasion atemps from Florida proved fruitless. After that the United States attempted to buy Cuba from Spain but was always turned away.
Rural impoverishment in Spain led to a real Spanish expatriation to Cuba. Among people inbound were the parents of Fidel Castro. During the 1890s pro-independence unrest resuscitated, fueled by bitterness of the restrictions levied on Cuban trade by Spain and antagonism to Spain’s increasingly tyrannous and bungling administration of Cuba. On 15 July 1895 rebellion erupted and the independence party, led by Tomas Estrada Palma and the poet Jose Marti, proclaimed Cuba an sovereign republic. Marti was killed shortly thereafter and has become Cuba’s unquestioned national hero.
This brief paper can’t possibly address the immense account that is Cuba. I have numbered several excellent books at the closing of this web page. You can locate them all at Amazon or your local bookstall.
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
