map midi through cubase
The island of Cuba has been lived in for around 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 name 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 sail of discovery on 24 October 1492, and immediately claimed it for Spain.
Spain owned the island of Cuba for 388 years, ruled by the governor of Havana. It had an economic base of orchard agriculture and main exports of sugar, coffee and tobacco to European Community and afterwards to North America. Brits grabbed the island in 1762, but returned it to Spain the following year. Like most of the Spanish Empire, a minute land-owning elite of settlers reserved all the social and economic power. They were served by a population of modest farmers, laborers and slaves.
Many architectural masterpieces reconstructed during Spanish rule still stand today. An excellent illustration is the Catedral de San Cristobal, Havana. During the 1820s, when the rest of Spain’s conglomerate in South America rebelled and seceeded, Cuba stayed loyal, although a few pushed for independence. Partly because fears of a slave revolt (as had came about in Haiti) if the Spanish withdrew, partly because the prosperity of Cuban settlers depended on their export trade to Europe, and partly because Cuba dreaded the rising power of the United States more than they disliked Spanish colonial reign.
Due to the fact that Cuba is a slim 90 miles from the United States has had a profound influence on the lands growth. Politicians in the south plotted 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 rising was defeated after many failed invasion atemps from Florida proved fruitless. After that the United States tried to buy Cuba from Spain but was always declined.
Rural impoverishment in Spain led to a substantial Spanish emigration to Cuba. Among those inbound were the parents of Fidel Castro. During the 1890s pro-independence upheaval vivified, fueled by resentment of the limitations imposed on Cuban trade by Spain and hostility to Spain’s more and more oppressive and fumbling governance of Cuba. On 15 July 1895 rebellion broke out and the independence party, led by Tomas Estrada Palma and the poet Jose Marti, extolled Cuba an independent republic. Marti was killed soon thereafter and has become Cuba’s undisputed national hero.
This brief paper can’t possibly address the vast chronicle that is Cuba. I have named many first-class books at the conclusion of this website. You can get 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
