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The island of Cuba has been inhabited 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 epithet Cuba in fact is derived from the Taino word cubanacan, which means "a central place”. Christopher Columbus sighted the island during his most important sail of discovery on 24 October 1492, and immediately laid claim it for Spain.
Spain ruled the island of Cuba for 388 years, governed by the governor of Havana. It had an economic base of grove agribusiness and main exportations of sugar, coffee and tobacco to Europe and later to North America. Brits appropriated the island in 1762, but delivered it to Spain the following year. Like most of the Spanish Empire, a modest land-owning elect of settlers harboured all the social and economic power. They were attended to by a population of modest farmers, laborers and slaves.
Many architectural masterpieces constructed 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 conglomerate in South America renegaded and seceeded, Cuba rested loyal, although a few pressed for independence. Partly because concerns of a slave rebellion (as had materialised 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 surfacing power of the United States more than they disliked Spanish colonial reign.
Due to the fact that Cuba is a mere 90 miles from the United States has had a unfathomed influence on the countries maturation. 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 uprising was foiled after a few failed invasion atemps from Florida proved fruitless. After that the United States tried to buy Cuba from Spain but was universally declined.
Rural impoverishment in Spain led to a significant Spanish expatriation to Cuba. Among those inbound were the parents of Fidel Castro. During the 1890s pro-independence unrest resuscitated, fueled by resentment of the limitations inflicted on Cuban trade by Spain and antagonism to Spain’s more and more tyrannous and incapable administration of Cuba. On 15 July 1895 rebellion erupted and the independence party, led by Tomas Estrada Palma and the poet Jose Marti, extolled Cuba an independent republic. Marti was killed shortly thereafter and has become Cuba’s unchallenged national hero.
This short paper can’t possibly address the immense story that is Cuba. I have named many first-class books at the end 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
