Steinberg Cubase SE workshops
The island of Cuba has been domiciled for about several thousand years by Amerindian peoples called 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 voyage of discovery on 24 October 1492, and instantly claimed it for Spain.
Spain maintaned the island of Cuba for 388 years, ruled by the governor of Havana. It had an economic base of grove farming and main exports of refined sugar, java and tobacco to European Community and later to North America. British people grabbed the island in 1762, but delivered it to Spain the following year. Like most of the Spanish Empire, a minor land-owning elect of settlers harboured all the social and economic power. They were served by a universe of small farmers, laborers and slaves.
Many architectural masterpieces built during Spanish rule still stand nowadays. An first-class 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, though a select few campaigned for independence. Partly because concerns of a slave revolt (as had materialized in Haiti) if the Spanish disengaged, partly because the prosperity of Cuban colonists counted on their export trade to Europe, and partly because Cuba dreaded the emerging power of the United States more than they disliked Spanish colonial regulation.
Due to the fact that Cuba is a slender 90 miles from the United States has had a unfathomed influence on the lands exploitation. Politicians in the south plotted the island’s annexation as a way of supporting the pro-slavery forces in the U.S. throughout the early 1900’s. In 1848 a pro-annexationist revolt was foiled after various failed invasion atemps from Florida turned up fruitless. After that the United States tried to buy Cuba from Spain but was universally rejected.
Rural poverty in Spain led to a significant Spanish emigration to Cuba. Among those inbound were the parents of Fidel Castro. During the 1890s pro-independence excitement resuscitated, fueled by rancor of the restrictions brought down on Cuban trade by Spain and antagonism to Spain’s progressively oppressive and bungling 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 briefly thereafter and has become Cuba’s unquestioned national hero.
This short paper can’t possibly address the immense story that is Cuba. I have numbered various first-class books at the end 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
