What Is the Population of Cuba
The island of Cuba has been populated for around several thousand years by Amerindian peoples named the Taino and Ciboney. The Taino were known to be mostly farmers while the Ciboney were hunter-gatherers. The moniker Cuba in fact is derived from the Taino word cubanacan, which means "a central place”. Christopher Columbus sighted the island while on his foremost voyage of discovery on 24 October 1492, and forthwith claimed it for Spain.
Spain maintaned the island of Cuba for 388 years, governed by the governor of Havana. It had an economic base of orchard farming and main exports of sugar, coffee and tobacco to Europe and later on to North America. Brits took over the island in 1762, but returned it to Spain the following year. Like most of the Spanish Empire, a minor land-owning elite of settlers retained all the social and economic force. They were helped by a universe of small farmers, laborers and slaves.
Many architectural masterpieces constructed in the period of Spanish rule still stand nowadays. An first-class example 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 select few pressed for independence. Partly because fears of a slave rising (as had occurred in Haiti) if the Spanish disengaged, partly because the prosperity of Cuban colonists depended on their exportation trade to Europe, and partially because Cuba dreaded the mounting 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 wakeless influence on the countries evolution. Politicians in the south diagrammed the island’s annexation as a means of bolstering the pro-slavery forces in the U.S. throughout the early 1900’s. In 1848 a pro-annexationist uprising was thwarted after a few failed invasion atemps from Florida turned up fruitless. After that the United States tried to buy Cuba from Spain but was universally turned down.
Rural impoverishment in Spain led to a major Spanish emigration to Cuba. Among people inbound were the parents of Fidel Castro. During the 1890s pro-independence upheaval vivified, fueled by rancor of the restrictions levied on Cuban trade by Spain and antagonism to Spain’s progressively tyrannical and incompetent 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 not long thereafter and has become Cuba’s unchallenged national hero.
This short article can’t possibly address the huge history that is Cuba. I have named a few first-class books at the closing of this report. You can find 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
