jfk and cuban missile crisis
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 moniker Cuba in fact is derived from the Taino word cubanacan, which means "a central place”. Christopher Columbus sighted the island while on his first voyage of discovery on 24 October 1492, and forthwith 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 orchard agriculture and main exportations of sugar, coffee and tobacco to European Community and afterwards to North America. British took over the island in 1762, but delivered it to Spain the following year. Like most of the Spanish Empire, a modest land-owning elite of settlers controlled all the social and economic force. They were served by a population of modest farmers, laborers and slaves.
Many architectural masterpieces constructed in the period of Spanish rule still stand nowadays. An excellent example is the Catedral de San Cristobal, Havana. During the 1820s, when the rest of Spain’s empire in South America rebelled and seceeded, Cuba persisted loyal, though a few crusaded for independence. Partly because fears of a slave insurrection (as had materialized in Haiti) if the Spanish withdrew, partly because the prosperity of Cuban settlers depended on their export trade to Europe, and partially 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 slim 90 miles from the United States has had a fundamental influence on the countries growth. Politicians in the south planned 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 rebellion was thwarted after various failed invasion atemps from Florida proved fruitless. After that the United States tried to buy Cuba from Spain but was always turned away.
Rural poverty 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 revived, fueled by bitterness of the restrictions levied on Cuban trade by Spain and antagonism to Spain’s progressively tyrannical and unskilled administration 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 not far 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 a few first-class books at the closing of this web page. You can find 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
