Recording Reason in Cubase
The island of Cuba has been domiciled for the last 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 during his number one sail of discovery on 24 October 1492, and instantly 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 plantation agribusiness and main exports of refined sugar, coffee and tobacco to European Community and later on to North America. British conquered the island in 1762, but returned it to Spain the following year. Like most of the Spanish Empire, a modest land-owning elite of colonists maintained all the social and economic force. They were served by a universe of modest farmers, laborers and slaves.
Many architectural masterpieces constructed in the period of Spanish rule still stand nowadays. An excellent model is the Catedral de San Cristobal, Havana. During the 1820s, when the rest of Spain’s empire in South America rebelled and seceeded, Cuba stayed loyal, although a select few campaigned for independence. Partly because concerns of a slave insurrection (as had came about in Haiti) if the Spanish pulled away, partly because the prosperity of Cuban settlers counted on their export trade to Europe, and partly 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 mere 90 miles from the United States has had a profound influence on the countries exploitation. Politicians in the south planned 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 insurrection was thwarted after various failed invasion atemps from Florida proved fruitless. After that the United States attempted to buy Cuba from Spain but was always rejected.
Rural impoverishment in Spain led to a significant Spanish emigration to Cuba. Among people inbound were the parents of Fidel Castro. During the 1890s pro-independence excitement revived, fueled by rancour of the restrictions levied on Cuban trade by Spain and antagonism to Spain’s increasingly tyrannical and unskilled governance of Cuba. On 15 July 1895 rebellion erupted and the independence party, led by Tomas Estrada Palma and the poet Jose Marti, announced Cuba an independent republic. Marti was killed briefly thereafter and has become Cuba’s unquestioned national hero.
This short article can’t possibly address the vast history that is Cuba. I have named many excellent books at the closing of this website. You can discover 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
