mark cuban dennis rodman
The island of Cuba has been populated for about several thousand years by Amerindian peoples known as 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 while on his number one ocean trip of discovery on 24 October 1492, and at once laid claim it for Spain.
Spain maintaned the island of Cuba for 388 years, ruled by the governor of Havana. It had an economic base of plantation agribusiness and main exportations of sugar, java and tobacco to European Community and in the future to North America. British appropriated the island in 1762, but returned it to Spain the following year. Like most of the Spanish Empire, a small land-owning elect of settlers held all the social and economic force. They were attended to by a universe of small farmers, laborers and slaves.
Many architectural masterpieces reconstructed during Spanish rule still stand today. An excellent model is the Catedral de San Cristobal, Havana. During the 1820s, when the rest of Spain’s empire in South America rebelled and seceeded, Cuba stayed loyal, though a few pressed for independence. Partly because fears of a slave revolt (as had came about in Haiti) if the Spanish disengaged, partly because the prosperity of Cuban settlers depended on their exportation trade to Europe, and partly because Cuba dreaded the developing power of the United States more than they disliked Spanish colonial rule.
Due to the fact that Cuba is a mere 90 miles from the United States has had a sound influence on the countries exploitation. Politicians in the south planned the island’s annexation as a way of bolstering the pro-slavery forces in the U.S. throughout the early 1900’s. In 1848 a pro-annexationist insurrection was defeated after several failed invasion atemps from Florida turned up fruitless. After that the United States tried to buy Cuba from Spain but was always rejected.
Rural poverty in Spain led to a major Spanish emigration to Cuba. Among those inbound were the parents of Fidel Castro. During the 1890s pro-independence turmoil resuscitated, fueled by rancor of the limitations levied on Cuban trade by Spain and antagonism to Spain’s more and more tyrannous and incompetent administration of Cuba. On 15 July 1895 insurrection erupted and the independence party, led by Tomas Estrada Palma and the poet Jose Marti, proclaimed Cuba an sovereign republic. Marti was killed briefly thereafter and has become Cuba’s undisputed national hero.
This brief article can’t possibly address the huge history that is Cuba. I have numbered various first-class books at the close of this website. 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
