Cuba
Un article de Vev.
Modèle:Otheruses Modèle:Infobox Country
The Republic of Cuba (Spanish: Modèle:Audio or Modèle:Audio [re'puβlika ðe ˈkuβa]), consists of the island of Cuba (the largest and second-most populous Island of the Greater Antilles), Isla de la Juventud and several adjacent small islands. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean at the confluence of the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. Cuba is south of the eastern United States and The Bahamas, west of the Turks and Caicos Islands and Haiti and east of Mexico. The Cayman Islands and Jamaica are to the south. The national flower is Hedychium Coronarium Koenig, most known as "mariposa" (butterfly) and the national bird is "Tocororo" or "Cuban Trogon" from the family of Trogonidae.
Cuba is the most populous nation in the Caribbean. Its people, culture and customs draw from several sources including the aboriginal Taíno and Ciboney peoples, the period of Spanish colonialism, the introduction of African slaves, and its proximity to the United States. The island has a tropical climate that is moderated by the surrounding waters; however, the warm temperatures of the Caribbean Sea and the fact that the island of Cuba sits across the access to the Gulf of Mexico make Cuba prone to frequent hurricanes. Cuba's main island, at 766 miles long (1,232.5 km), is the world's 17th largest. Winston Churchill, who knew Cuba well, considered it to be a "...large, rich, beautiful island..." <ref>Churchill, Winston S. 1951 The Second World War of matt k., Volume 5: Closing the Ring. Houghton Miffin Edition. Bantam Books, New York No ISBN or other number provided. P. 606 “Prime Minister to Foreign Secretary 5. Feb (19)44. Your minute about raising certain legations to the status of embassy. I must say that Cuba has as good a claim as some other places –“la perla de Las Antillas.” Great offense will be given if all the others have it and this large, rich, beautiful island, the home of the cigar, is denied. Surely Cuba has much more claim than Venezuela. You will make a bitter enemy if you leave them out, and after a bit you will be forced to give them what you have given to the others.” </ref>
History
The recorded history of Cuba began on 17 October 1492, when Christopher Columbus sighted the island during his first voyage of discovery and claimed it for Spain.<ref>Gott, Richard : Cuba A New History. Yale University Press. p13 </ref> Columbus named the island Isla Juana in reference to Prince Juan, the heir apparent.<ref name=2a>Modèle:Cite book</ref> The island had been inhabited by Native American peoples known as the Taíno and Ciboney whose ancestors had come from South America and possibly North and Central America in a complex series of migrations at least several centuries before, and perhaps 6,000 to 8,000 years ago.<ref>AFP 2007 (accessed 11-18 2007) Arqueología Hallazgo podría dar pistas sobre primeros habitantes de la Isla. Cuba en el Encuentro, jueves 15 de noviembre de 2007 http://www.cubaencuentro.com/es “"oficialmente se habla de la presencia de los primeros humanos (en Cuba) en un periodo que oscila entre 6.000 y 8.000 años".” </ref> The Taíno were farmers and the Ciboney (far more commonly written Siboney in neo-Taino nations) were both farmers and hunter-gatherers; some have suggested that copper trade was significant and mainland artifacts <ref>« »</ref> have been found in proximal Taíno cultures.
The coast of Cuba was fully mapped by Sebastián de Ocampo in 1511, and in that year the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa. Other towns including Havana (founded in 1515) soon followed. The Spanish, as they did throughout the Americas, oppressed and enslaved the approximately 100,000 indigenous people that resisted conversion to Christianity on the island. Within a century they had all but disappeared as a distinct nation as a result of the combined effects of European-introduced disease, forced labor and other mistreatment, though aspects of the region's aboriginal heritage has survived in part via the rise of a significant Mestizo population.<ref name="Taino">An Interview On the Taino DNA testing in Puerto Rico. Profiles, Vol. 1, no. 2, 15 August 2000
° Cuban Site Casts Light on an Extinct People Anthony DePalma, The New York Times, 5 July 1998
° Gott, Richard Cuba: A new history, Yale University Press: 2004, p.7 "A third element in Cuba's ethnic mix, the trace of indigenous blood that runs through most of its people except for the most recent immigrants, has usually been ignored or denied. It is vigorously downplayed by most historians in Havana today, although those in Santiago are more freethinking. The official line, doggedly maintained over the years, in spite of increasing evidence to the contrary, is that the Tainos were destroyed during the early years of conquest. This is clearly not so."</ref><ref> DNA Genealogy, E. Elizondo "The mt-DNA haplogroup results were a complete surprise. The test results indicated that I descended on my maternal line from Siberian Eskimos who migrated across the Aleutian chain and Alaska and down to North and South America*. This contrasted with my genealogy research which showed that my oldest known female ancestor, Maria Obregon Ceballos, was born in the city of Trinidad, one of the oldest towns in Cuba -founded in 1514, presumably of Spanish ancestry." http://www.cubagenweb.org/dna.htm</ref> With destruction of aboriginal society, the settlers began to exploit African slaves, with more resistance to the diseases from the Old World, and who soon made up a significant proportion of the inhabitants.
Colonial Cuba
Cuba was in Spanish possession for almost 400 years (circa 1511-189Image:Cool.gif. They had an economy based on plantation agriculture and mining, the export of sugar, coffee and tobacco to Europe and later to North America. Havana was seized by the British in 1762, but restored to Spain the following year. The Spanish population was boosted by settlers leaving Haiti when that territory was ceded to France. As in other parts of the Spanish Empire, the small land-owning elite of Spanish-descended settlers held social and economic power, supported by a population of Criollo, small farmers, laborers and African-descended slaves.
In the 1820s, when the other parts of Spain’s empire in Latin America rebelled and formed independent states, Cuba remained loyal, although there was some agitation for independence. This was partly because the prosperity of the Cuban settlers depended on their export trade to Europe, partly through fears of a slave rebellion (as had happened in Haiti) if the Spanish withdrew and partly because the Cubans feared the rising power of the United States more than they disliked Spanish rules.
An additional factor was the continuous migration of Spaniards to Cuba from all social strata, a demographical trend that had ceased to exist in other Spanish possessions decades before and which contributed to the slow development of a Cuban national identity. Pirates were also still a problem and defense against them depended heavily on the presence of Spanish troops. <ref>The Times Thursday, September 01, 1825 London, Middlesex NASSAU (NEW PROVIDENCE), “June 4,-By an arrival from the coast of Cuba, we learn that His Majesty's schooner Speedwell accompanied by several barges from other vessels of war, is engaged in securing a key near Cayo Romano (off North Coast of Cuba), where a number of pirates, had secreted themselves in the woods. Some mall craft, which the pirates had used in. their cruises, were captured by the barges; and with the assistance of some chasseurs which the Spanish Government at Principe had furnished for the purpose, it was expected the pirates would be hunted out of their lurking-places…</ref>
Cuba’s proximity to the U.S. has been a powerful influence on its history. Throughout the 19th century, Southern politicians in the U.S. plotted the island’s annexation as a means of strengthening the pro-slavery forces in the U.S., and there was usually a party in Cuba which supported such a policy. In 1848, a pro-annexations rebellion was defeated and there were several attempts by annexationist forces to invade the island from Florida. There were also regular proposals in the U.S. to buy Cuba from Spain. During the summer of 1848, President James K. Polk quietly authorized his ambassador to Spain, Romulus Mitchell Saunders, to negotiate the purchase of Cuba and offer Spain up to $100 million. While an astonishing sum of money at the time for one territory, trade in sugar and molasses from Cuba exceeded $18,000,000 in 1838 alone.<ref>The North Carolina Standard; Wednesday. April 6, 1859. …facts are drawn from the official report on the " Commercial Relations of the United States with all Nations," prepared at the State Department and published by order of Congress, we imported from Cuba in 1838 as follows: Molasses, $3,051,1515; sugar, $15,555,409.</ref> Spain, however, refused to consider ceding one of its last possessions in the Americas.
After the American Civil War apparently ended the threat of pro-slavery annexation, agitation for Cuban independence from Spain revived, leading to a rebellion in 1868 led by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a wealthy lawyer landowner from Oriente province who freed his slaves, proclaimed a war and was named President of the Cuban Republic-in-arms. This resulted in a prolonged conflict known as the Ten Years' War between pro-independence forces and the Spanish Army, allied with local supporters. There was much sympathy in the U.S. for the independence cause, but the U.S. declined to intervene militarily or to even recognize the legitimacy of the Cuban government in arms, despite the fact that many European and Latin American nations had done so. <ref> Historia de las Guerras de Liberación de Cuba
.</ref> In 1878, the Pact of Zanjón ended the conflict, with Spain promising greater autonomy to Cuba.
The island was exhausted after this long conflict and pro-independence agitation temporarily died down. There was also a prevalent fear that if the Spanish withdrew or if there was further civil strife, the increasingly expansionist U.S. would step in and annex the island. In 1879-1880, Cuban patriot Calixto Garcia attempted to start another war, known in Cuban history as the Little War but received little support.<ref> The Little War (La Guerra Chiquita)
.</ref> Partly in response to U.S. pressure, slavery was abolished in 1886, although the African-descended minority remained socially and economically oppressed, despite formal civic equality granted in 1893. During this period, the rural poverty in Spain provoked by the Spanish Revolution of 1868 and its aftermath led to an even greater Spanish emigration to Cuba.
During the 1890s, pro-independence agitation revived, fueled by resentment of the restrictions imposed on Cuban trade by Spain and hostility to Spain’s increasingly oppressive and incompetent administration of Cuba. Few of the promises for economic reform made by the Spanish government in the Pact of Zanjon were kept. In April 1895, a new war was declared, led by the writer and poet José Martí who had organized the war over a ten year period while in exile in the U.S. and proclaimed Cuba an independent republic — Martí was killed at Dos Rios shortly after landing in Cuba with the eastern expeditionary force. His death immortalized him and he has become Cuba’s undisputed national hero.
The Spanish armed forces totaled about 200,000 troops against a much smaller rebel army which relied mostly on guerilla and sabotage tactics to fight battles, and the Spaniards retaliated with a campaign of suppression. General Valeriano Weyler was appointed military governor of Cuba, and as a repressive measure he herded the rural population into what he called reconcentrados, described by international observers as "fortified towns." These reconcentrados are often considered the prototype for the 20th century concentration camps.<ref>Anne Applebaum. Gulag: A History of the German Concentration Camps. "the first modern concentration camps were set up not in Germany or Russia, but in colonial Cuba, in 1895. In that year, in an effort to put an end to a series of local insurgencies, imperial Spain began to prepare a policy of reconcentratión, intended to remove the Cuban peasants from their land and 'reconcentrate' them in camps, thereby depriving the insurgents of food, shelter and support. By 1900, the Spanish term reconcentratión had already been translated into English, and was used to describe a similar British project, initiated for similar reasons, during the Boer War in South Africa."</ref> Between 200,000 and 400,000 Cuban civilians died from starvation and disease during this period in the camps. These numbers were verified by both the Red Cross and U.S. Senator (and former Secretary of War) Redfield Proctor. U.S. and European protests against Spanish conduct on the island followed.<ref> The Spanish-American War
. Cuban Reconcentration Policy and its Effects
. Retrieved on 2007-01-29. </ref>.
Military events of consequence include the break out to the western provinces "La Invasion", and the taking of the fort complexes at Tunas and Guisa.
In 1897, fearing U.S. intervention, Spain moved to a more conciliatory policy, promising home rule with an elected legislature. The rebels rejected this offer and the war for independence continued.
The Maine incident
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The U.S. battleship Maine, the largest Navy ship built in an American shipyard to date, arrived in Havana on January 25 1898. The Spanish and their Cuban supporters saw the uninvited arrival of the Maine as intimidation, though McKinley claimed it was to offer protection to the 8,000 American residents in the island.
On 15 February the Maine was mysteriously blown up in Havana harbor, killing 266 men. Forces in the U.S. favoring intervention in Cuba seized on this incident to accuse Spain of blowing up the ship (although Spain had no motive for doing so and there was no evidence of Spanish culpability[citation needed]). Swept along on a wave of nationalist sentiment, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution calling for intervention<ref>http://www.bartleby.com/43/45.html</ref> and President William McKinley was quick to comply.
Those skeptical of the U.S. accusations were suspicious because the most important officers were at a party on shore. There were 81 foreigners and 82 black seamen among the 25 officers and 318 enlisted killed.
An investigative commission arrived in Havana on February 21 aboard USS Mangrove where Judge Advocate of the Navy Adolf Marix reported the ship had been sunk by a mine placed underneath the ship by a diver named Pepe "Taco" Barquin.<ref>Report published in Document 207 of President MacKinley's Message to the 55 Senate Appendix "F": Report on the Destruction of the USS Maine, 1898 available in New York Public Library.</ref> Marix reported Jose "Taco" Barquin had been offered $6,000 and was killed the day after. Another diver was killed by guards and another wounded and jailed on the night of the explosion. The one in jail (his arrest was recorded in Regla's official documents), Marix reported, was being poisoned by the Spanish authorities.
According to a letter from Brigadier Freyre de Andrade, the chief planners were Garcia Corujedo, Villasuso, Maribona and other Freemason businessmen, associated with gun runner Maximo Gomez and New York politician Astor Chandler, a friend of Theodore Roosevelt.[citation needed]
Commonly authors find the matter far less definitive and assignment of guilt far less clear.<ref>Samuels, Peggy and Harold. Remembering the Maine. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995).</ref> McMorrow, states: "Thus, the conclusion that the explosion which destroyed the ship was triggered by an external blast, as reached by both the Sampson and Vreeland inquiries, seems to be a valid one. Having reached that same conclusion, we still don't know what actually caused the blast. Was the MAINE destroyed by a Spanish mine, as so many believed in 1898, by sabotage, or by some kind of infernal machine?"<ref>McMorrow, Edward P. (accessed 10-27-07) What Destroyed the USS MAINE - An opinion. http://www.spanamwar.com/Mainemo1.htm http://www.spanamwar.com/Mainemo2.htm</ref>
Since early investigations pointed to Spanish involvement, the geopolitics of the Cuban circumstance, the growing military power of the U.S. plus public horror at the massive death toll of the repressive actions by the Spanish government, sentiment in the United States in favor of war with Spain over Cuba was very strong.
The result was the Spanish-American War, in which U.S. forces landed in Cuba in June 1898 and quickly overcame the exhausted Spanish resistance. In August a peace treaty was signed under which Spain agreed to withdraw from Cuba. Some advocates in the U.S. supported Cuban independence, while others argued for outright annexation. As a compromise, the McKinley administration placed Cuba under a 20-year U.S. treaty. The Cuban independence movement bitterly opposed this arrangement, but unlike the Philippines, where events had followed a similar course, there was no outbreak of armed resistance.
Independence
Theodore Roosevelt, who had fought in the Spanish-American War and had some sympathies with the independence movement, succeeded McKinley as President of the United States in 1901 and abandoned the 20-year treaty proposal. Instead, the Republic of Cuba gained formal independence on 20 May 1902, with the independence leader Tomás Estrada Palma becoming the country’s first president. Under the new Cuban constitution, however, the U.S. retained the right to intervene in Cuban affairs and to supervise its finances and foreign relations. Under the Platt Amendment, Cuba also agreed to lease to the U.S. the naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Cuba today does not celebrate May 20 as their date of independence, but instead October 10, as the first declaration of independence, May 1 international (but not US) labor day, and also July 26, the date of Castro's first attack on Moncada Barracks<ref>de La Cova, Antonio Rafael 2007 The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution. University of South Carolina Press ISBN-10 1570036721 ISBN-13 978-1570036729</ref>
In 1906, following disputed elections, an armed revolt led by Independence War Veterans broke out and that defeated the meager government forces loyal to Estrada Palma and the U.S. exercised its right of intervention.<ref>Middletown Daily Times-Press 2006 Palma will Resign Beaten President to Call Special Session of congress and Give Up His Seat. Middletown Daily Times-Press Wednesday, September 26, 1906 Middletown, New York, page 2. “… All the Members of the cabinet and the heads of departments have presented resignations to President Palma. He has accepted them, but the officers will retain their positions until the resignation of the president has been presented to congress. O’Farrill secretary of state and justice, said their probably would be a government by a commission appointed by the American government. He mentioned Senor Barreiro chief justice of court and General Mario Menocal as commissioners. …”</ref> The country was placed under U.S. occupation and a U.S. governor, Charles Edward Magoon, took charge for three years. Magoon's governorship in Cuba was viewed in a negative light by many Cuban historians for years thereafter, believing that much political corruption was introduced during Magoon's years as governor.<ref name="Thomas">Modèle:Cite book</ref> In 1908, self-government was restored when José Miguel Gómez was elected President, but the U.S. retained its supervision of Cuban affairs.
1912 Race War
In 1912 Partido Independiente de Color attempted to establish a separate black republic in Oriente Province.<ref>Sources include Portuondo Linares, Serafin 1950 Los Independientes de Color. Historia del Partido Independiente de Color. Direccion de Cultura. Havana. (Fermoselle Lopez, Rafael 1974. Politica y Color in Cuba, La Guerrita de 1912. Ediciones Geminis Montevideo. Other sources give peripheral mention to burning of property at that time </ref> Perhaps because the group lacked sufficient weaponry the main tactic was to set businesses and private residences on fire.<ref> there are the physical acts of arson, in intent and action indistiguishable from the recent Balkan ethnic cleansing. Take for example the incident a La Maya (Fermoselle pp. 243-245) where the town was Take for example the incident a La Maya (Portuondo pp. 243-245) where the town was burned including houses bought by Mambi "de color" using their pensions.</ref> The movement was a failure and General Monteagudo suppressed the rebels with considerable bloodshed. Historians differ on the interpretation of this circumstance, some view it as suppression of Black rights, others as an attempt at racial cleansing and secession on part of the Black activists. <ref>Officially the PIC wanted merely an armed protest to remove La Ley Morua. However, Fermoselle ( p. 199) has a cryptic sentence at the end of his book."Seria interesante saber si el PIC fue influido por ideas nationalistas generadas en otras islas del Caribe." However, there it the famous letter of Evaristo Estenoz "Todo hombre de color que no mate instaneamente al cobarde agresor que lo veje en un establecimineto publico, es un miserable indigno de ser hombre, que deshonra a su patria y a su raza" (Portuondo p. 56)</ref>
World War I
Cuban pilots distinguished themselves fighting for France in the Lafayette Escadrille [1]. Cuba shipped considerable sugar to England, via smuggling strategy which avoided U-boat attack by the subterfuge of shipping sugar to Sweden (this operation was managed by Cuban Ambassador Carlos Garcia Velez, General Calixto Garcia's eldest surviving son). During the unsuccessful revolt against the Menocal government in 1917, the government attributed this in part to pro-German sentiment on part of the "Liberales." However, this was not proven to most historians satisfaction. The Menocal government declared war on Germany very soon after the U.S. did, and as a result the Mexican government broke off relations with Cuba.
After World War I
Despite frequent outbreaks of disorder, however, constitutional government was maintained until 1930, when Gerardo Machado y Morales suspended the constitution.Machado's hold on power was weakened following a decline in the demand for exported agricultural produce due to the Great Depression, the attacks first by War of Independence Veterans, and later by covert terrorist organizations principally the ABC <ref> Dutcher, Rodney (NEA) 1933 Machado Fights Terrorists With Terror To Hold Iron-Handed Foes: of "ABC” Copy Gangster Methods to Rid Island of Despot Who Has Ruled Since-1924 Syracuse Herald Friday evening, April 28, 1933. Front Page “Terrorism has been met "with terrorism in this unique outbreak waged mostly by students and young Intellectuals who brand Machado as a tyrant. On one side is the "ABC," secret terrorist, organization that has copied the methods ol gangsters in the fine art of assassination. On the other side are Machado's strong-armed and equally, ruthless secret police. Murder has followed murder in a series of spectacular killings. The Law of Flight Typical were assassinations of Dr. Clemente Vasquez Bella, president of the Cuban Senate and political ally of Machedo, and Capt. Miguel Calvo former head of the secret police Both were slain on busy throughfares, in daylight, by men who dashed past in autos firing shot guns. Many members, or suspected members of the "ABC" have been slain by the secret police in equally ruthless manner. Often, those killings have been defended on the ground that the victims preferred death to capture, though the evidence. In many cases Is not convincing. One police official alone is accused of 40 official assassinations. Police have also defended killings on the ground that the ley de fuga (law of flight) recognized the right of an officer to shoot an escaping prisoner. But, according to witnesses, prisoners have been released told to flee and then shot down they ran. Bombing has been common. Incendiary fires have destroyed much property. Great numbers of political prisoners have been jailed. President Machado, whose life has been threatened many times, is heavily guarded by soldiers and machine gun crews in his palace. He rides to and from his country estate in a bullet-proof auto, under escort of soldiers armed with rifles and machine guns. NEXT: Cuba economic distress and America's vast stake on the Island</ref>
During a general strike in which the communist party took the side of Machado <ref> Argote-Freyre, Frank, 2006 Fulgencio Batista: Volume 1, From Revolutionary to Strongman. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey ISBN 978-0813537010 p. 50 and later explained by the communists themselves in: Massón Sena, Caridad 2004 (accessed 6-9-07) Dos visiones sobre el nacionalismo y las alianzas: Mella y Villena. Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana “Juan Marinello”. La Habana, Cuba. http://168.96.200.17/ar/libros/cuba/marin/nacion.rtf. “ Según explicara Fabio Grobart a posteriori: “ Esta miopía política se reflejó también en una errónea conclusión que los dirigentes del Partido sacaron, de la justa apreciación de que sustituir a Machado por un gobierno de la oposición burgués-terrateniente significaba dejar a Cuba en su estado de semicolonia y a las masas populares en la misma miseria y esclavitud y que únicamente un gobierno de trabajadores podía producir los cambios radicales que el país necesitaba /.../Dicha a conclusión fue profundamente falsa por ser mecánica, por no basarse en un análisis correcto del desarrollo dialéctico de la situación y, esencialmente, por no tener en cuenta que las masas revolucionarias, enardecidas por la victoria sobre Machado y orientadas en su acción por una justa política de su vanguardia marxista-leninista, sí podría asegurar los cambios profundos, es decir, la realización del programa agrario-antimperialista, por el cual abogaba y luchaba desde su fundación el Partido Comunista.(22)” Reference 22 is Fabio Grobart, 1985, p. 93, This author also refers in this regard to Leonel Soto, 1977, vol. II, p. 8 </ref> the Senior elements of the Cuban army forced Machado into exile and installed Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, son of Cuba's founding father, as President. In September, 4th-5th (1933) however, a second coup (led by sergeants, most notably Fulgencio Batista, overthrew Céspedes leading to the formation of the first Ramón Grau San Martín government.) Notable bloody events in this violent period include the separate sieges of Hotel Nacional and Atares Castle (see Blas Hernandez). This government lasted just 100 days, but engineered radical socialistic changes in Cuban society and a rejection of the Platt amendment.
In 1934, Batista and the army, who were the real center of power in Cuba, replaced Grau with Carlos Mendieta y Montefur. In 1940, Batista decided to run for President himself. Because of a split with the leader of the opposition, Ramón Grau San Martín, Batista turned instead to the Communist Party of Cuba, which had grown in size and influence during the 1930s.
Batista's control ends with democratic rule
With the support of the Communist-controlled labor unions, Batista was elected President and his administration carried out major social reforms. Several members of the Communist Party held office under his administration. Batista's administration formally took Cuba into World War II as a U.S. ally, declaring war on Japan on December 9, 1941, then on Germany and Italy on December 11, 1941; Cuba, however, did not significantly participate militarily in World War II hostilities. At the end of his term in 1944, in accordance with the constitution, Batista stepped down and Ramón Grau was elected to succeed him. Grau initiated increased government spending on health, education and housing. Grau’s auténticos were bitter enemies of the Communists and Batista, which opposed most of Grau’s program.
World War II
While Cuba, although supplying vast quantities of sugar, and strategic manganese metal, was not greatly involved in combat during WWII; although, U.S. air bases were established, Cuban freighters were sunk, a German spy was discovered and executed, and a German submarine was sunk by the Cuban Navy. During WWII the Nazis counterfeited vast sums of U.S. currency which was sent via the Dozenberg group to Cuba and other parts of Latin America; Soviet directions to the Cuban communist party, seem to have been sent via radio from Switzerland by the Alexander Foote Network <ref>Dallin, David J 1955 Soviet espionage, Yale University Press New Haven ASIN B0007DVJ8M pp. 394 and 198-203 </ref>
After World War II
Grau completed his presidential term. In 1948, Grau was succeeded by Carlos Prío Socarrás, who had been Grau's minister of labor and was particularly hated by the Communists. Corruption is generally believed to have increased notably under Prío's administration; however not all accusations of corruption were proven, and Eduardo Chibás, leader of the Ortodoxo party to which Fidel Castro belonged, committed suicide when his allegations were not substantiated. Corruption is partially attributed to the influx of gambling money into Havana, which became a safe haven for mafia operations. However, the influence and power of the organized crime syndicates in Cuba is commonly exaggerated.<ref>Lack of political influence of the "Mafia" in Cuba is easily demonstrated. For instance: Schwartz, Rosalie 1997 Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln NA; New Ed edition (February 1, 1999) ISBN-10 0803292651 ISBN-13 978-0803292659 P. 145 “One month after the March 1953 Saturday Evening Post hit the newsstands. Cuba’s military intelligence forces (Servicio de Inteligencia Militar, or SIM) arrested a dozen North Americans suspected of running crooked games at the Tropicana, Sans Souci, and Jockey Club. The government deported eleven of the offenders and announced the problem solved.” p. 137 “Casino owners did not strew North American Garbage across a pristine Cuban landscape. Foreign gamblers introduced neither gangsterism nor vice to the island, nor did they necessarily corrupt righteous islanders. Cubans themselves scoffed at the idea that the mob could “march into Cuba and start giving orders like little Cesar, a reference to actor Edward G. Robinson’s celluloid character. “You just go ahead and send your toughest characters down here,” one Cuban challenged an American journalist. “I guarantee you that even a second-rate Cuban politician will run rings around him.” The mob was playing ball with seasoned veterans, not second stringers.”</ref> Prío carried out major reforms such as founding a National Bank and stabilizing the Cuban currency. The influx of investment fueled a boom which did much to raise living standards across the board and create a prosperous middle class in most urban areas, although the gap between rich and poor became wider and more obvious. <ref> José, Alvarez 2004 Cuban Agriculture Before 1959: The Social Situation. FE480 Extension Service/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences/University of Florida http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/FE/FE48000.pd” Law No. 5 created the Banco de Fomento Agrícola e Industrial de Cuba (BANFAIC), which was enacted on December 20, 1950, by President Carlos Prío Socarrás. (In fact, Law No. 13 of 1948, establishing Cuba's national bank, envisioned an agricultural bank as a necessary complement.) Law No. 15 of 1949 authorized the issuance of $200 million in bonds. Of the $25 million going to BANFAIC, an equal distribution went to the agricultural and industrial branches. … It is clearly stated in the ACU study: “The city of Havana is living an epoch of extraordinary prosperity, while in the countryside, people, especially the agricultural workers, are living in sluggish, miserable, and desperate conditions too difficult to believe” (Gastón et al., 1957, p. 6). Thus it is obvious that the living conditions in the city of Havana, and perhaps in a few other urban areas of Cuba, did not parallel those described in this fact sheet for the countryside.” </ref>
From Batista to Castro
The 1952 election was a three-way race. Roberto Agramonte of the Ortodoxos party led in all the polls, followed by Dr. Aurelio Hevia of the Auténtico party, and running a distant third was Batista, who was seeking a return to office. Both front runners, Agramonte and Hevia in their own camps, had decided to name Col. Ramon Barquin, then a diplomat in Washington, DC to head the Cuban Armed Forces after the elections. Barquin was a top officer who commanded the respect of the professional army and had promised to eliminate corruption in the ranks. Batista feared that Barquin would oust him and his followers, and when it became apparent that Batista had little chance of winning, he staged a coup on 10 March 1952 and held power with the backing of a nationalist section of the army as a “provisional president” for the next two years. Justo Carrillo told Barquin in Washington in March 1952 that the inner circles knew that Batista had aimed the coup at him; they immediately began to conspire to oust Batista and restore democracy and civilian government in what was later dubbed La Conspiracion de los Puros de 1956 (Agrupacion Montecristi). In 1954, under pressure from the U.S.[citation needed], Batista agreed to elections. The Partido Auténtico put forward ex-President Grau as their candidate, but he withdrew amid allegations that Batista was rigging the elections in advance. Batista could then claim to be an elected President.
Fidel Castro directed a failed assault on the Moncada Barracks, in Santiago de Cuba, and on the smaller Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Barracks and on the Feast of Saint Ann July 26, 1953.<ref>de La Cova, Antonio Rafael 2007 The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution. University of South Carolina Press ISBN-10 1570036721 ISBN-13 978-1570036729</ref>.
In April 1956, Batista had given the orders for Barquin to become General and Chief of the Army. But it was too late. Even after Barquin was informed, he decided to move forward with the coup to rescue the morale of the Armed Forces and the Cuban people. On April 4, 1956, a coup by hundreds of career officers led by Col. Barquin (then Vice Chairman of the Inter-American Defense Board in Washington and Cuban Military Attaché of Sea, Air and Land to the US) was frustrated by Rios Morejon. The coup broke the backbone of the Cuban Armed Forces. The officers were sentenced to the maximum terms allowed by Cuban Martial Law. Barquin was sentenced to solitary confinement for 8 years. La Conspiración de los Puros resulted in the imprisonment of the top commanding brass of the Armed Forces and the closing of the military academies. Barquin was the founder of La Escuela Superior de Guerra (Cuba's War College) and past director of La Escuela de Cadetes (Cuba's Military Academy). Without Barquin's officers the army's ability to combat the revolutionary insurgents was severely curtailed.
On 2 December 1956 a party of 82 revolutionaries, led by Castro, landed in a yacht named Granma with the intention of establishing an armed resistance movement in the Sierra Maestra. The yacht had come from Mexico, where Castro had been exiled to, and where his army was strengthened with the help of Ernesto Che Guevara, who later became one of the most important people in the Cuban revolution and one of Castro's closest allies. Castro had gone to Mexico after serving only two years of a twenty year prison sentence for his part in a 1953 rebel attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba.[2]. Castro received his pardon from Batista after being requested by the Archbishop of Santiago, Monseñor Enrique Perez Serantes and Senator Rafael Diaz-Balart, at the time Fidel Castro's brother-in-law. After the landing, Batista launched a campaign of repression against the opposition, which only served to increase support for the insurgency. With Barquin's professional officers in La Prision Modelo de Isla de Pinos in the Gulf of Mexico, the Army lacked the leadership and will to fight the insurgents.
Through 1957 and 1958, opposition to Batista grew, especially among the upper and middle classes and the students, among the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and in many rural areas. In response to Batista's plea to purchase better arms from the U.S. in order to root out the insurgents in the mountains, the United States government imposed an arms embargo on the Cuban government on March 14, 1958. By late 1958, the rebels had succeeded in breaking out of the Sierra Maestra and launched a general insurrection, joined by hundreds of students and others fleeing Batista’s crackdown on dissent in the cities. When the rebels captured Santa Clara, east of Havana, Batista decided the struggle was futile and fled the country to exile in Portugal and later Spain. Batista named Gen. Eulogio Cantillo Chief of the Army and gave him instructions not to release Barquin and his officers. Nevertheless, Barquin, who had the backing of the US, was rescued from Isla de Pinos in the early hours and taken to Campamento Ciudad Militar Columbia where he relieved Cantillo and assumed the post of Chief of Staff (serving as Chief of the Armed Forces and de facto president of Cuba for a short period of time) in an effort to establish order in the streets and the Armed Forces. He negotiated the symbolic change of command between Camilo Cienfuegos, Che Guevara, Raul and Fidel Castro, after the Supreme Court decided that the Revolution was the source of law and its representative should assume command. With less than 300 men Camilo assumed the post from Barquin who in Columbia alone commanded 12,000 professional soldiers. Castro’s rebel forces entered the capital on January 8 1959. Shortly after Dr. Manuel Lleo Urrutia assumed power.
Cuba following revolution
Fidel Castro became Prime Minister of Cuba in February 1959, Head of Government in the country, until temporarily handing it over to his brother, Raul Castro, for medical reasons in July 2006. During 1959, the new revolutionary government carried out measures such as the expropriation of private property with no or minimal compensation(sometimes based on property tax valuations that the owners themselves had kept artificially low)[3], the nationalization of public utilities, and began a campaign to institute tighter controls on the private sector such as the closing down of the gambling industry. The government also evicted many Americans, including mobsters (who, in collaboration with Batista, ran the gambling casinos in Havana) [4] [5]) from the island. Some of these measures were undertaken by Fidel Castro's government in the name of the program that he had outlined in the Manifesto of the Sierra Maestra <ref>http://www.chibas.org/raul_chibas_manifiesto.php </ref> while in the Sierra Maestra. However, he failed to enact one element of his reform program, which was to call elections under the Electoral Code of 1943 within the first 18 months of his time in power and to restore all of the provisions of the Constitution of 1940 that had been suspended under Batista.
Castro flew to Washington, DC in April 1959, but was not met by President Eisenhower, who decided to attend a golf tournament rather than meet with the Cuban leader.<ref>http://www.princeton.edu/plas/publications/Essays/castro.html (permission from http://www.princeton.edu/plas/publications/Essays/castro.html required for access) </ref> Castro returned to Cuba after a series of meetings with African-American leaders in New York's Harlem district, and after a lecture on "Cuba and the United States" delivered at the headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.<ref>http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagsg022.php </ref> [6][7] Summary executions of thousands of suspected Batista collaborators and members of the opposition through the "paredones" that took place after show trials, coupled with the seizure of privately-owned businesses and the rapid demise of the independent press, nominally attributed to the powerful pro-revolution printing unions,<ref name="Thomas">Modèle:Cite book</ref> raised questions about the nature of the new government.Modèle:Who
Attitudes towards the Cuban revolution both in Cuba and in the United States were changing rapidly, not surprisingly, given that Castro was executing thousands of political opponents without trial (sometimes before crowds in stadiums such as the Palace of Sports), imprisoning additional thousands of opponents without trial, shutting down independent media, and so on.
The nationalization of private property and businesses, totaling about $25 billion U.S. dollars <ref> Lazo, Mario, American Policy Failures in Cuba--Dagger in the Heart! 1970 Twin Circle Publishing Co., New York, pp.198-200, 240</ref>) and, particularly, U.S.-owned companies (to an excess of 1960 value of US $1.0 billions <ref> Lazo, Mario, American Policy Failures in Cuba--Dagger in the Heart! 1970, Twin Circle Publishing Co., New York, pp.198-200, 240</ref> <ref> Faria, Miguel A. Cuba in Revolution--Escape from a Lost Paradise, 2002, Hacienda Publishing, Macon, Georgia, pp.105,182,248</ref>) aroused immediate hostility within the Eisenhower administration. Cubans began to leave their country in great numbers and formed a burgeoning expatriate community in Miami that was opposed to the Castro government.
The United States government became increasingly hostile towards the Castro-led government of Cuba throughout 1959. Some contend that this, in turn, may have influenced Castro's movement away from the liberal elements of his revolutionary movement and increase the power of hardline Marxist figures in the government, notably Che Guevara. This theory is open to debate and has been attacked in various publications which have argued that Castro undertook the Revolution with the goal of turning Cuba towards socialism.
In October 1959, Castro openly declared himself to be friendly towards Communism, though he did not yet claim to be a Communist himself, while the liberal and other anti-Communist elements of the government were purged. Many who had initially supported the revolution fled the country to join the growing exile community in Miami. In March 1960, the first aid agreements were signed with the Soviet Union. In the context of the Cold War, the U.S. saw the establishment of a Soviet base of influence in the Americas as a threat and plans were approved to remove Castro from power (see The Cuban Project). In late 1960, a trade embargo was imposed. As Cuba was forced to find new markets to trade in, the embargo strengthened Cuba's ties with the Eastern Bloc countries. At the same time, the Kennedy administration authorized plans for an invasion of Cuba by Florida-based exiles, taking advantage of anti-Castro uprisings which were repressed (see some details and references in War Against the Bandits and Bay of Pigs Invasion). The result was the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion of April 1961. President John F. Kennedy withdrew promised US air support for the invading force at the last minute and the populist anti-Castro uprising failed to materialize. Kennedy refused to provide direct US military intervention and the invasion force was routed. After this Castro declared Cuba a socialist republic, and himself a Marxist-Leninist, in May of 1961 and December of 1961 respectively.
Marxist-Leninist Cuba
One immediate strategic result of the Cuban-Soviet alliance was the decision to place Soviet medium range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) and intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) in Cuba. This precipitated the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, during which the Kennedy administration threatened the Soviet Union with nuclear war unless the missiles were withdrawn. The idea to place missiles in Cuba was brought up either by Castro or Khrushchev, but agreed by the USSR for the reason that the U.S. had their nuclear missiles placed in Turkey and the Middle East, thus directly threatening USSR security. With minutes to go until the Soviet ships carrying a further shipment of missiles reached a US naval blockade, the Soviets backed down, and made an agreement with Kennedy. All the missiles were to be withdrawn from Cuba, but at the same time the US was to move its missiles from Turkey and elsewhere in the Middle East. Kennedy however couldn't lose face by doing this immediately, but made an assurance to withdraw the US missiles within a couple of months.
Another result was that Kennedy agreed not to invade Cuba in the future. In the aftermath of this, there was a resumption of contacts between the U.S. and Castro, resulting in the release of the anti-Castro fighters captured at the Bay of Pigs to the US in exchange for a package of aid. However in 1963 relations deteriorated again as Castro moved Cuba towards a fully-fledged Communist system modeled on the Soviet Union.<ref> Faria, Miguel A. Cuba in Revolution --- Escape From a Lost Paradise, 2002, Hacienda Publishing, Inc., Macon, Georgia, pp. 163-228</ref>. The U.S. imposed a complete diplomatic and commercial embargo on Cuba, and began Operation Mongoose. In the beginning, U.S. influence in Latin America was strong enough to make the embargo very effective and Cuba was forced to divert virtually all its trade towards the Soviet Union and its allies. However, public declarations of support from Latin American governments for the USA's policies were harder to come by. The Mexican ambassador to the US told the Kennedy administration: "If we publicly declare that Cuba is a threat to our security, forty million Mexicans will die laughing."
In 1965, Castro merged his revolutionary organizations with the Communist Party, of which he became First Secretary, with Blas Roca as Second Secretary; later to be succeeded by Raúl Castro, who as Defense Minister and Fidel’s closest confidant became and has remained the second most powerful figure in the government. Raúl Castro’s position was strengthened by the departure of Che Guevara to launch unsuccessful attempts at insurrectionary movements in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and then Bolivia, where he was killed in 1967. Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, President of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, was a figurehead of little importance. Castro introduced a new constitution in 1976 under which he became President himself, while remaining chairman of the Council of Ministers.
Although Cuba's relations with the Soviet Union deteriorated considerably during the mid 1960s, relations between the two countries improved following the Cuban government's endorsement of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. As a result, the Soviet Union increased its aid to Cuba. Indeed, through the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviets were prepared to subsidise all this in exchange for the strategic asset of an ally under the nose of the United States and the undoubted propaganda value of Castro’s considerable prestige in the developing world.<ref> Cuba: Order and Revolution, Jorge I. Domínguez </ref>
During the 1970s, Castro moved onto the world stage as a leading spokesperson for Third World “anti-imperialist” governments. He provided invaluable military assistance to pro-Soviet forces in Angola, Ethiopia, Yemen and other African and Middle Eastern trouble spots. Cuban forces were decisive in helping the MPLA forces win the Angolan Civil War in 1975. Although the bills for these expeditionary forces were paid by the Soviets, the significant size of the force placed a considerable strain on Cuba’s fragile economy, which was adversely affected by the loss of manpower. Cuba's economic growth was also hampered by its dependence on sugar exports, which forced the Soviets to provide further economic assistance by buying the entire Cuban sugar crop, even though domestic producers in the Soviet Union grew enough sugar beet to supply domestic demand. In exchange the Soviets had to supply Cuba with all its fuel, since it could not import oil from any other source.
By the 1970s, the ability of the U.S. to keep Cuba isolated was declining. Cuba had been expelled from the Organization of American States in 1962 and the OAS had cooperated with the U.S. trade boycott for the next decade, but, in 1975, the OAS lifted all sanctions against Cuba and both Mexico and Canada broke ranks with the U.S. by developing closer relations with Cuba. Both countries said that they hoped to foster liberalization in Cuba by allowing trade, cultural and diplomatic contacts to resume — in this they were disappointed, since there was no appreciable easing of repression against domestic opposition. Castro did stop openly supporting insurrectionary movements against Latin American governments, although pro-Castro groups continued to fight the military dictatorships which then controlled most Latin American countries.
The Cuban exile community in the U.S. grew in size, wealth and power and politicized elements effectively opposed liberalization of U.S. policy towards Cuba, and have been accused of many terrorist acts, including the bombing of civilian Cubana flight 455 in 1976, resulting in the death of all 73 passengers (New York Times, May 18th 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/national/18posada.html). However, the efforts of the exiles to foment an anti-Castro movement inside Cuba, let alone a revolution there, met with limited success. On Sunday, April 6, 1980, 10,000 Cubans stormed the Peruvian embassy in Havana seeking political asylum. One of the people who entered the embassy at this time documented his experiences in "Days of the Embassy" (published June 8, 2007). On Monday, April 7, the Cuban government granted permission for the emigration of Cubans seeking refuge in the Peruvian embassy.<ref> The Daily News -- April 1980
. The Eighties Club - The Politics and Pop Culture of the 1980s
(April 1980)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> On April 16 500 Cuban citizens left the Peruvian Embassy for Costa Rica. On April 21 many of those Cubans started arriving in Miami via private boats and were halted by the US State Department on April 23. The boat lift continued, however, since Castro allowed anyone who desired to leave the country to do so through the port of Mariel and this emigration became known as the Mariel boatlift. In all, over 125,000 Cubans emigrated to the United States before the flow of vessels ended on June 15.<ref> The Daily News -- June 1980
. The Eighties Club - The Politics and Pop Culture of the 1980s
(June 1980)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref>
Post-Cold War Cuba
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 dealt Cuba a giant economic blow. It led to another unregulated exodus of asylum seekers to the United States in 1994, but was eventually slowed to a trickle of a few thousand a year by the U.S.-Cuban accords. It again increased in 2004-06 although at a far slower rate than before.
Castro’s "popularity," which opponents contend is difficult to assess in a tightly controlled society such as Cuba, was severely tested by the aftermath of the Soviet collapse (a time known in Cuba as the Special Period). The loss of the nearly five billion USD that the Soviet government provided the Cuban government in aid in the form of a guaranteed export market for Cuban sugar and cheap oil had a significant impact on the country's economy.
As in all Communist countries, the collapse of the Soviet Union caused a crisis in confidence for those who believed that the Soviet Union was successfully “building socialism” and providing a model that other countries should follow. However, this event, even combined with a tightening of the embargo by the US government, was insufficient to persuade Cuba's Communists to surrender their grip on power. Notwithstanding the communist's insistance on clinging onto power, there were numerous popular uprisings in the early 1990s, the most notable of which was the "Maleconazo" of 1994.
By the later 1990s the situation in the country had stabilized. <ref>http://www.haciendapub.com/castro3.html</ref> <ref>http://www.haciendapub.com/castro4.html</ref> By then Cuba had more or less normal economic relations with most Latin American countries and had improved relations with the European Union, which began providing aid and loans to the island. Communist China also emerged as a new source of aid and support, even though Cuba had sided with the Soviets during the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s. Cuba also found new allies in President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Evo Morales of Bolivia, both major oil and gas exporters.
Transfer of duties
On July 31, 2006, Fidel Castro delegated his duties as President of the Council of state, President of the Council of Ministers, First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party and the post of commander in chief of the armed forces to his brother and First Vice President, Raúl Castro<ref>http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/8/15/224049.shtml</ref> <ref>http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/8/22/213013.shtml</ref>. This transfer of duties has been described as temporary while Fidel Castro recovers from surgery undergone after suffering from an "acute intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding". Fidel Castro was too ill to attend the nationwide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Granma boat landing on December 2, 2006, which fueled speculations that Castro had stomach cancer,<ref>Castro not dying, US envoys told. BBC News, 18 December 2006.</ref> though Spanish doctor Dr. García Sabrido stated that his illness was a digestive problem and not terminal, after an examination of the subject on Christmas Day.<ref> Castro does not have cancer, says Spanish doctor
. Times Online
. Retrieved on 2006-12-26. </ref> <ref>http://www.haciendapub.com/surgneuro15.html</ref>
On January 31, 2007, footage of Castro meeting with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez was broadcast, where, according to international media reports, Castro "appeared frail but stronger than three months ago",<ref>Cuban TV shows 'stronger' BBC News. Castro</ref> and the Cuban leader made a lengthy surprise appearance by phone on Chávez's radio talk show Aló Presidente the following month.<ref>Ailing Castro says 'I feel good' BBC News.</ref> Though Castro loyalists in the Cuban government have maintained that he will stand in the 2008 elections to the Cuban National Assembly, speculation has continued as to whether he will ever return to power.<ref>Castro 'to be fit to hold power' BBC News.</ref> Recent requests for mass donations of copper ornaments are interpreted by some to suggest support for persistent rumors that massive memorial statues are being prepared. <ref>http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2007/08/16/nacional/artic13.html</ref>
Some public discussions of the future among Cuban government officials have been published. <ref>http://www.desdecuba.com/articulos/11_01.shtml</ref>
Government and politics
Domestic Politics
Following the enactment of the Socialist Constitution of 1976, which was adopted without following the procedures laid out in the Constitution of 1940, the Republic of Cuba was defined as a socialist republic. This constitution was replaced by the Socialist Constitution of 1992, the present constitution, which claimed to be guided by the ideas of José Martí, and the political ideas of Marx, Engels and Lenin.<ref name="constitution">Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, 1992. Cubanet.</ref> The present constitution also ascribes the role of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) to be the "leading force of society and of the state."<ref name="constitution"> The first secretary of the Communist Party, Fidel Castro, is concurrently President of the Council of State (President of Cuba) and President of the Council of Ministers (sometimes referred to as Prime Minister of Cuba).<ref>Country profile: Cuba BBC online </ref> Members of both councils are elected by the National Assembly of People’s Power.<ref name="state">Inter-American commission on Human Rights</ref> The President of Cuba, who is also elected by the Assembly, serves for a five-year term and there is no limit to the number of terms of office.<ref name="state"/> Fidel Castro has been dictator since the adoption of the Constitution in 1976 when he replaced Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado. The Supreme Court of Cuba serves as the nation's highest judicial branch of government. It is also the court of last resort for all appeals from convictions in provincial courts.
Cuba's national legislature, the National Assembly of People's Power (Asamblea Nacional de Poder Popular), is the supreme organ of State power and has 609 members who serve five-year terms.<ref name="state"/> The assembly meets twice a year, between sessions legislative power is held by the 31 member Council of Ministers. Candidates for the Assembly are approved by public referendum. All Cuban citizens over sixteen years of age who have not been found guilty of a criminal offense can vote. Article 131 of the Constitution states that voting shall be "through free, equal and secret vote". Article 136 states: "In order for deputies or delegates to be considered elected they must get more than half the number of valid votes cast in the electoral districts". Votes are cast by secret ballot and are counted in public view. Individual vote totals, which are invariably high, are not verified by non-partisan, independent, or non-state organs and observers. Nominees are chosen at local gatherings from multiple candidates before gaining approval from election committees. In the subsequent election, there is just one candidate for each seat, who must gain a majority to be elected.
No political party is permitted to nominate candidates or campaign on the island, though the Communist Party of Cuba has held five party congress meetings since 1975. In 1997, the party claimed 780,000 members, and representatives generally constitute at least half of the Councils of state and the National Assembly. The remaining positions are filled by candidates nominally without party affiliation. Other political parties campaign and raise finances internationally, whilst activity within Cuba by oppositional groups is minimal and illegal. While the Cuban constitution has language pertaining to freedom of speech, rights are limited by Article 62, which states that "None of the freedoms which are recognized for citizens can be exercised contrary to... the existence and objectives of the socialist state, or contrary to the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism[8]. Violations of this principle can be punished by law." Because the means of production are in the hands of the state and under the control of the government, there have been numerous cases where violations of this law have cost dissidents their employment.
For the above conditions, opponents of the present Cuban government sustain Cuban elections are neither free nor fair. <ref> People in Need (a Czech human right organization) 2007 Cuba's upcoming elections are neither free nor fair Cubanet CUBA NEWS October 11 , 2007 http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y07/oct07/18e7.htm that presently structured elections in Cuba are neither open nor fair. These opponents make the following points (slightly paraphrased): “During the Parliamentary elections, Cubans: (1) have almost no real choice in who can be considered a candidate since they have no right to propose independent candidates on a national level; (2) the number of candidates is equal to the number of people who are to be elected; (3) candidates are chosen by six specific organizations under the direct control of the communist party; (4) those not affiliated with one of these six organizations have no means of participating in the selection process; (4) voters can be over-represented by serving on one or several of the organizations; (5) voters can only select the approved candidates for the ballots to be considered valid; (6) ballots with no candidate selected or with write-in or other suggestions are invalid.” </ref>
Members of the Communist Party Cubans participate in the community-based Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, which play a central role in daily life. These groups are designed to coordinate public projects, ensure that the population remains loyal to the government's specific brand of socialism, and act as neighbourhood watchdogs against "counter-revolutionary" activities.
The Cuban Communist Party has not openly held its statutorily required Congress for ten years, which is at least five years overdue. It is not expected that one will be held until either Fidel Castro recovers or an open public and permanent successor is named <ref> ""Es improbable que se celebre mientras Fidel no esté condiciones de estar en la reunión físicamente, aunque no haya retornado al gobierno", dijo un académico cubano que prefirió no revelar su nombre. " [9]</ref>
Foreign Relations
Since Cuba became a declared socialist republic in 1961, the United States Government has initiated various policy measures against Cuba which have had a considerable political and economic effect on the island; these have variously been designed to encourage Cubans to remove the leadership and to undertake political change towards liberal democracy. The most significant of these measures was the United States embargo against Cuba and the subsequent Helms-Burton Act of 1996. The US government, its supporters and other observers contend that the Cuban government does not meet the minimal standards of a democracy, especially through its lack of multi-party contests for seats and the limitations on free speech that limit a candidate's ability to campaign.<ref> TITLE 22 > CHAPTER 69A > § 6021 U.S. Code Collection Cornell Law School, Ithaca N.Y,
. Retrieved on 2007-03-07.
</ref> The Cuban government, its supporters and other observers within and outside Cuba argue that Cuba has a form of democracy, citing the extensive participation in the nomination process at the national and municipal level.
The US government has budgeted $39 million in 2008 for "broadcasting to Cuba".[10]
Human rights
(See also Guantanamo Bay detention camp)
The Cuban government has been accused of numerous human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials, and extra-judicial executions.<ref> Information about human rights in Cuba
(español)
. Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos
(April 7 1967)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> Dissidents complain of harassment and torture.<ref> Castro sued over alleged torture
. News from Russia
(November 16 2005)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> While the Cuban government placed a moratorium on capital punishment in 2001, it made an exception for perpetrators of an armed hijacking 2 years later. Groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have issued reports on Cuban prisoners of conscience.<ref> CUBA
. Amnesty International Online Documentation Library
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> Opponents claim the Cuban government represses free expression by limiting access to the Internet.<ref> Cuba
. Reporters Without Borders (receives Funds of the Center for a Free Cuba)
. Retrieved on 2007-01-27. </ref>
Human Rights Watch claims that the true number of political prisoners may well be vastly understated.<ref name=HRW-Cuba996-05>« »</ref> According to Human Rights Watch, political prisoners, along with the rest of Cuba's prison population, are confined to jails with substandard and unhealthy conditions.<ref name=HRW-Cuba996-05 />
In the last weeks of March 2003, the Cuban government sentenced 75 members of the opposition to prison terms of up to 28 years. The activists were charged with “disrespect” toward the Revolution, “treason,” and “giving information to the enemy,” in the harshest backlash against peaceful dissent that the island had seen in years.<ref>« »</ref><ref>« »</ref> Since 2003, human rights supporters have sent thousands of appeals to the Cuban authorities calling for the release of the prisoners. The numbers of recognized political prisoners varies over time, increasing and decreasing with circumstances. However all former political prisoners are subject to arbitrary re-arrest.<ref>« »</ref> Political arrests continue.<ref>« »</ref>
On the fourth anniversary of a major crackdown on human rights activists in Cuba that saw dozens sentenced to long prison terms for peaceful promotion of basic rights and freedoms, human rights organizations called for the release of the 59 prisoners who remain in jail, several of whom are seriously ill.<ref> CUBA
. Amnesty International Online Documentation Library
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> Organizations like Human Rights First called on the Cuban government and, in particular, to interim leader Raul Castro, to immediately and unconditionally release the 59 individuals who remain in prison since their arrest in the spring of 2003.
The Ladies in White are the wives and relatives of those imprisoned in a series of controversial 2003 arrests. They have persistently and peacefully advocated their release since then.<ref> e.g. « » Modèle:Verify credibility</ref>
Marta Beatriz Roque has been twice detained for her opposition to the government. In July 1997, she and three other dissidents were detained for publishing a paper titled "The Homeland Belongs to All,"<ref>« »</ref> which discussed Cuba's human rights situation and called for political and economic reforms. The paper, which was labeled seditious by the government, led to her being imprisoned for a little over three years. On April 3, 2003, Roque was brought to trial and convicted. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison for engaging in “activities aimed at subverting the internal order of the Cuban State, provoking its destabilization and the loss of its independence,” and receiving “substantial monetary funds from the U.S. Government.” On July 22, 2004, Roque was unexpectedly released from prison due to her declining health. Medical parole, however, is given only for the duration of the illness. As such, she is subject to rearrest and detainment in the event that there is any improvement in her health. According to Amnesty International, Roque has been harassed repeatedly by Cuban government supporters and state security agents, including receiving death threats and being physically assaulted since her early release from prison.<ref>« » (from internet archive)</ref><ref>« »</ref>
Normando Hernández González is an independent journalist sentenced to 25 years in prison in the spring of 2003 for his commentaries on Cuban society, including pieces on the Cuban health, educational and judicial systems, and for his promotion of free expression. Mr. Hernández was apparently held in a cell for more than a year with a prisoner known to have tuberculosis, despite repeated concerns expressed by him and his family. He was recently confirmed to have contracted tuberculosis and is suffering from high fevers, fatigue and fainting. The doctors at Prison Kilo 7 in Camagüey, where he is being held, are reportedly refusing him medical assistance. There have also been reports that he has been physically assaulted by prison guards. <ref>« »</ref>
José Luis García Paneque was sentenced to 24 years in prison in 2003 for his work as an independent journalist, as well as for his involvement in a civic initiative to promote democratic reforms, known as the Varela Project. García Paneque’s health has dramatically worsened since his imprisonment; he suffers from intestinal problems that have caused him to lose almost 90 pounds and at one point left him emaciated at a weight of around 110 pounds. He also suffers from rectal bleeding, and has dangerously low blood pressure. Despite these symptoms, his wife reports that he is not receiving adequate medical care and her request for his release on medical parole in November 2005 has not been answered.<ref>« »</ref><ref>« »</ref>
Luis Enrique Ferrer García received a 28-year sentence for his work with the Varela Project, a civic initiative calling for democratic reforms in Cuba. To protest his unjust imprisonment, particularly harsh prison conditions and mistreatment by prison authorities, Ferrer García has engaged in numerous hunger strikes throughout his detention, often leaving him very ill and weak. In addition, he has been the victim of numerous physical assaults by security guards and violent prisoners, most of whom are encouraged by prison authorities to harass and intimidate him.<ref>« »</ref>
Oscar Elías Biscet is a physician and president of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, which peacefully promotes human rights and the rule of law. In reprisal for his human rights activities, the 41-year-old doctor was sentenced to 25 years in prison and has been held in some of the harshest conditions, including in punishment cells and solitary confinement. For long periods of time he is denied family visits, the right to leave his cell, and essential packages of medicine and food. Biscet suffers from chronic gastritis, hypertension and recurring infections, and is reportedly losing his eyesight; his poor health has been severely aggravated by unhygienic prison conditions and harsh treatment. At one point, Dr. Biscet was reported have lost more than 60 pounds.<ref> CUBA
. Amnesty International Online Documentation Library
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref>
Although still clinging to official Cuban government view that racial progress was poor before Castro reached power (despite the obvious ethnicity of the leader and many senior members of the Batista regime) has eroded in the last few years.<ref>Blue, Sarah A. 2007 The Erosion of Racial Equality in the Context of Cuba's Dual Economy. Latin American Politics and Society 49(3)35-68 ISSN: 1531426X</ref>
Freedom of information in Cuba
In addition to scholarly concerns and disputes among experts on Cuba, major factors limiting accuracy of information about the island include the censorship by the Cuban Government.
Stuart Hamilton writes in the Progressive Librarian issue 19-10 2002 [11]
- "The members of the underground opposition parties face constant scrutiny from the authorities for their anti-government views. However, at the same time as enforcing a crackdown on dissidents the government is also accused of preventing ordinary Cubans accessing information. Independent news agencies are banned, and journalists who report stories contrary to the official line reported in the state newspaper, Granma, are likely to be victimised. As a result of this anti-government stories are normally found in newspapers and journals published abroad, as journalists go underground to send stories out to foreign sympathisers via telephone. Miami in Florida is the centre of anti-Castro publishing activity, with papers such as Nueva Prensa containing articles critical of the regime."
Expelled BBC correspondent Stephen Gibbs comments
- "Cuban officials are surprisingly unapologetic on the issue. Their justification is that Cuba is in the midst of an undeclared war with a shameless US administration which is determined to undermine the Cuban revolution. They sometimes allude to what they seem to regard as the British government's distinguished censorship of the press during World War II." [12].
Apparently Cuban cabinet ministers do not know about Castro's state of health:
- " Cuban leader Fidel Castro is not at death's door and rumors in Miami of his demise are wishful thinking, Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto said on Wednesday...he had no inside information on Castro's medical condition, but deduced from the 81-year-old leader's regular essays and columns that he is not dying." [13]
Trade unions
There are unions in Cuba, with a membership totaling 98% of the island's workforce. Unions do not register with any state agency, and are self financed from monthly membership dues. Their supporters claim that union officers are elected on an open basis, and differing political views are found within each of the unions.<ref name=Cuba-solidarity> Is Cuba Democratic?
. Cuba-solidarity.org
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> However, all unions are part of an organization called the Confederación de Trabajadores Cubanos (Confederation of Cuban Workers, CTC), which does maintain close ties with the state and the Communist Party. Supporters claim that the CTC allows workers to have their voice heard in government; opponents claim that the government uses it to control the trade unions and appoint their leaders. The freedom of workers to express independent opinions is also a subject of debate. Supporters of the system argue that workers' opinions have in fact shaped government policy on several occasions, as in a 1993 proposal for tax reform,<ref name=Cuba-solidarity/> while opponents, citing studies by international labor organizations, point out that workers are required to pledge allegiance to the ideals of the Communist Party, and argue that the government systematically harasses and detains labor activists, while prohibiting the creation of independent (non-CTC affiliated) trade unions, that the leaders of attempted independent unions have been imprisoned, and that the right to strike is not recognized in the law.<ref>Modèle:Citeweb Trade Unions
. Violations of Social and Labor
. Retrieved on 2007-01-29.
</ref>
Cuban military involvement overseas
Role of Soviet advisers in training personnel for overseas operations
As early as 1959 Soviet Advisers were helping train overseas agents in Cuba. The agents were in place as early as September 1959 when KGB colonel, Valdim Kotchergin (or Kochergin) was seen in Cuba <ref>(British Foreign Office. Chancery American Department, Foreign Office, London September 2, 1959 (2181/59) to British Embassy Havana classified as restricted Released 2000 by among British Foreign Office papers FOREIGN OFFICES FILES FOR CUBA Part 1: Revolution in Cuba “in our letter 1011/59 May 6 we mentioned that a Russian workers' delegation had been invited to participate in the May Day celebrations here, but had been delayed. The interpreter with the party, which arrived later and stayed in Cuba a few days, was called Vadim Kotchergin although he was at the time using what he subsequently claimed was his mother's name of Liston (?). He remained in the background, and did not attract any attention..” </ref> Vadim Kochergin and also KGB Colonel (later General) Victor Simonov went on to train overseas personnel including Carlos the Jackal (Ilich Ramírez Sánchez) and subcomandante Marcos (commonly believed to be a non-Indigenous student called Rafael Sebastián Guillén<ref> Cuban American Foundation 2005 (accessed 10-22-07) El campo de entrenamiento "Punto Cero" donde el Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) adiestra a terroristas nacionales e internacionales November 7, 2005 http://www.canf.org/2005/1es/noticias-de-Cuba/2005-nov-07-el-campo-de-entrenamiento.htm “Los coroneles soviéticos de la KGB Vadim Kochergin y Victor Simonov (ascendido a general en 1970) fueron entrenadores en "Punto Cero" desde finales de los años 60 del siglo pasado. Uno de los" graduados" por Simonov en este campo de entrenamiento es Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, más conocido como "Carlos El Chacal". Otro "alumno" de esta instalación del terror es el mexicano Rafael Sebastián Guillén, alias "subcomandante Marcos", quien se "graduó" en "Punto Cero" a principio de los años 80.”</ref> Jorge Luis Vasquez, a Cuban who was imprisoned in East Germany, states that the Stasi (the East German secret police agency) trained the personnel of the Cuban Interior Ministry(MINIT) <ref>Levitin, Michael 2007 La Stasi entrenó a la Seguridad cubana. Nuevo Herald November 4, 2007 http://www.elnuevoherald.com/209/story/112259.html </ref>
Americas
The Cuban Government's military involvement in other countries of the America has been extensive. The most well known of these were the failed attempts by Ernesto Guevara in Bolivia and the support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Less known actions the 1959 adventures into the Dominican Republic <ref> AP 1950 Invasion Wiped Out Says Trujillo Waterloo Daily Courier Wednesday, June 24, 1959 Waterloo, Iowa, page 7 “The government announcement said Capt. Enrique Jimenez Moya, described by' the exiles as the expedition leader, was killed as he tried to escape, it identified six other bodies among the rebel dead, but did not list the total casualties or the size of the invasion force (other sources give the figure at about 89).”</ref> and Panama. Almost all countries in Latin America witnessed this kind of infiltration. Arnaldo Ochoa. later commander of Cuban forces in Angola, is said the only survivor of the Camilo Cienfuegos contingent sent on the doomed expedition to the Dominican Republic.<ref>Hernández, Félix José (accessed 10-22-07) Fidel Castro: la Infancia de un Jefe, Consejo Militar Cubano Americano. http://www.camcocuba.org/ADDITIONAL%20PAGES/HERNANDEZ/HERNANDEZ-I/FELIX-25.html “Franqui narra como después de la muerte de Camilo, su tropa fue enviada a “liberar” a la República Dominicana, osea, a una muerte segura. Sus oficiales de la Sierra pasaron a ocupar puestos de segunda categoría. ¡El único que se salvó en aquel momento fue ... Arnaldo Ochoa!” </ref>
The official position of the Cuban government is that although allegations of the Cuban government's military involvement in other countries of the Americas have been extensive these are not well substantiated. The alleged presence of "armed Cuban military advisors" on the island of Grenada was given as one reason for the US government invasion of the island and overthrow of its government in 1981. The commercial airport that was being built on Grenada with Cuban assistance was also cited by US President Ronald Reagan claimed as evidence of Cuban interference in the region. In a speech in 1983, Reagan stated that satellite images of baseball diamonds in Nicaragua in the 1980s was proof of Cuban infiltration.[citation needed] Critics would observe that Reagan ignored the fact that baseball had been popular in Nicaragua since the turn of the century. However, far more solid data backed up Reagan's statements.<ref>AP 1987 Cubans in Nicaragua said to be prepared to fight if invaded The News, Frederick, Md., Monday, December 28, 1987 Washington p. A-8 (AP) - All Cuban personnel in Nicaragua, both military and civilian, have instructions to organize into combat units to assist the Sandinista Army in the event of a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua, according to a high-ranking Cuban defector. Brig. Gen. Rafael del Pino Diaz, … The State Department has said there are between 2,500 and 3,500 Cuban military personnel in Nicaragua and an estimated 5,000 civilians, including doctors, teachers and others. Brig. Gen. Del Pino says there are only 300 to 400 Cuban soldiers in the country, but adds that even Cuban civilians there are regularly trained to ensure they are in adequate physical condition in case the cross-border march is ordered. Maj. Roger Miranda Bengoechea, a recent Nicaraguan Army defector, put the number of Cuban soldiers in Nicaragua at 500. … The Reagan administration has said there are no plans for an invasion and instead is hoping that the Contra rebels will either oust the Sandinistas or force them, through military pressure, to adopt Western-style democracy. … According to Brig. Gen. del Pino and Maj. Miranda, both Cuba and Nicaragua place high priority on avoiding a similar fate (as Grenada) for the Sandinista government. Brig. Gen. Del Pino ;..has told U.S. officials that each Cuban in Nicaragua has instructions on where to report once an invasion begins. Arms for the Cuban forces have been stashed for this eventuality, he has said. … Defense Minister Humberto Ortega, corroborating Maj. Miranda's comments in many aspects, said two weeks ago that a 600,000 member Nicaraguan military force, comprised mostly of militia and reserves, is being planned with a 1995 target date..” </ref> Casualty ratios in Grenada indicate that vigorous defense of the landing strip by the Cuban construction workers was one of the bravest ever carried out by nominal civilians.<ref>AP 1983 Searchers may have found Bishop's body Wednesday, November 09, 1983 Doylestown, Pennsylvania page 22 “CALIVIGNY, Grenada (AP) - U.S. soldiers dug up a burned and badiy decomposed body from a shallow pit Tuesday, and an officer said he was "relatively sure" it was the remains of slain Erime Minister Maurice Bishop. … Bishop, Foreign Minister Unison Whiteman, Housing Minister Norris Bain, Education Minister Jacqueline Creft and others were killed Oct. 19 after a crowd freed Bishop from house arrest and marched with him to the army headquarters at Fort Rupert (by Military Junta) U.S. forces invaded Oct. 25 The pit is next to a bombed supply shed at the Calivigny barracks, a camp where the U.S army believes the Cubans were training the Grenandian army. … Gen. Jack Farris, who said "I think it's kind of important to find the body (of Bishop). He was a hero to some people here. Bishop and other members of the socialist New Jewel Movement party seized power in 1979 in a coup which toppled the government of Sir Eric Gairy…In Washington, the State Department said Tuesday… an estimated 50 Cubans were killed and 59 wounded In fighting following the U.S. landing on Grenada. Until Tuesday, the administration had withheld its estimate of the number of Cuban dead. The Pentagon has said 18 Americans died in the conflict, and that 18 inmates at a mental hospital were killed in an accidental U.S. bombing. ” </ref> Others estimate the size of the Cuban and Grenadian forces much higher. <ref>Huchthausen, Peter 2003 America's Splendid Little Wars: A Short History of U.S. Military Engagements: 1975-2000, Viking (Penguin Group) New York ISBN-10 0670032328 ISBN-13 978-0670032327 pp. 64-85 p. 75 “…they faced one thousand Grenadian, another one thousand local Grenadian militia, and about 600 Cubans. The Cubans in the construction force working in the southwest corner of the island at Point Salinas airfield were expected to resist a landing by American Forces. There were additionally forty Cuban advisers assigned to the Grenadian Army, eighty seven Cuban soldiers, eighteen diplomats from a number of countries with military ties to Grenada, and of course, Cuban Colonel Comas Tortoló (Colonel Pedro Tortoló), who had just been sent by Castro to supervise the defense. </ref> Colonel Tortolo senior Cuban commander, and his staff were stripped of their rank and sent to Angola. <ref>de la Cova, Antonio R. 1997 U.S.-Cuba Relations during the Reagan Administration Chapter 20. President Reagan and The World Edited by Eric J. Schmertz, Natalie Datlof, and Alexej Ugrinsky Hofstra University Contributions in Political Science, Number 376 381-301 Greenwood Press Westport, Connecticut • London www.latinamericanstudies.org/articles/Reagan.pdf - http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=58988026 ” This rappochement attempt unraveled on October 25, (1983) when American troops and others from the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States invaded Grenada to restore order after the coup that killed Prime Minister Maurice Bishop. Cuban forces in Grenada had 24 killed, 57 wounded, and 642 taken prisoner.” End note 32. Marco Espinoza, "Fueron Derrotadas las Tropas de Ocupación de Castro en Grenada," Diario las Américas, October 28, 1983, p. 1; and "Why the Surprise Move in Grenada-And What Next?" U.S. News & World Report, November 7, 1983, p. 31. Cuban Colonel Pedro Tortoló, in charge of defenses in Grenada, and forty-two of his officers were later courtmartialed for cowardice, demoted to privates, and dispatched to the Angola front. "Coronel Tortoló Degradado a Soldado y Enviado a Angola," Diario las Américas, June 20, 1984, p. 1; and "Cuba: No Longer a Hero," Time, July 2, 1984, p. 37. </ref>
Soviet block weapons used in Nicaragua have been incorporated into a monument celebrating peace.
Africa and Asia Minor
The Cuban Government's military involvement in Africa has also been extensive, ranging from Algeria in the north west and the adjacent Asia minor country of Yemen to the North East <ref>Ramazani, Rouhollah K. 1975 The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Vol. 3 Sijthoff & Noordhoof, Holland ISBN 9028600698 Mentions Cuban intervention in several different sections e.g. p. 75 “Just as the Soviet Union has sought the destruction of the Omani regime by proxy of South Yemini and Cuban support for the insurgents, the United States…” p. 115 “The Soviet Union indirectly intervened in the civil war in Oman by aiding the Dhofari rebels through Cuban and South Yemen.” </ref> to Angola and Namibia in the south. Examples of international intrigue in Cuba, dating to the Gerardo Machado regime, when Stalinist Pole Fabio Grobart first entered the Island, are given by Roger Fontaine <ref>Fontaine, Roger 1988 [http://www.heritage.org/Research/LatinAmerica/bg655.cfm?renderforprint=1 “Third, the U.S. should consider ending its low-level diplomatic ties with Cuba THE EARLY YEARS OF CUBAN TERRORISM Cuban history is replete with examples of terrorism, most notably in the early 1930s when groups of young Cubans struggled against General Gerardo Machado, who ran Cuba with an iron hand for nearly a decade beginning in 1925. Calling themselves the *ABC it is unclear what the initials stood for (This stood for the level of its cell structure A being the highest level B, the next etc El Jigue)), these young Cubans invented many of the techniques of modern urban terrorism (coordinated bombing, for example which Cuban advisers have passed on in scores of training camps around the world to thousands of Argentinians Brazilians, Chileans, Colombians, Ecuadorans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Salvadorans, and Uruguayans, to name a few in Latin America, and to Basques, Namibians, Palestinians West Germans, and Yemenis. ”</ref>
Provinces and municipalities
Fourteen provinces and one special municipality (the Isla de la Juventud) now compose Cuba. These in turn were formerly part of six larger historical provinces: Pinar del Río, Habana, Matanzas, Las Villas, Camagüey and Oriente. The present subdivisions closely resemble those of Spanish military provinces during the Cuban Wars of Independence, when the most troublesome areas were subdivided. .....
| Modèle:Provinces of Cuba map | |||
| 1 | Isla de la Juventud (Isle of Youth) | ||
| 2 | Pinar del Río | 9 | Ciego de Ávila |
| 3 | La Habana (Havana) | 10 | Camagüey |
| 4 | Ciudad de la Habana (Havana City) | 11 | Las Tunas |
| 5 | Matanzas | 12 | Granma |
| 6 | Cienfuegos | 13 | Holguín |
| 7 | Villa Clara | 14 | Santiago de Cuba |
| 8 | Sancti Spíritus | 15 | Guantánamo |
The provinces are further divided into 170 municipalities.
Geography
Climate
Modèle:Climate chart Cuba is an archipelago of islands located in the Caribbean Sea, with the geographic coordinates 21°3N, 80°00W. Cuba is the principal island, which is surrounded by four main groups of islands. These are the Colorados, the Sabana-Camagüey, the Jardines de la Reina and the Canarreos. The main island of Cuba constitutes most of the nation's land area or Modèle:Km2 to mi2 and is the seventeenth-largest island in the world by land area. The second largest island in Cuba is the Isla de la Juventud (Isle of Youth) in the southwest, with an area of Modèle:Km2 to mi2. Cuba has a total land area of Modèle:Km2 to mi2.
The main island consists mostly of flat to rolling plains. At the southeastern end is the Sierra Maestra, a range of steep mountains whose highest point is the Pico Real del Turquino at Modèle:M to ft. The local climate is tropical, though moderated by trade winds. In general (with local variations), there is a drier season from November to April, and a rainier season from May to October. The average temperature is 21 °C in January and 27 °C in July. Cuba lies in the path of hurricanes, and these destructive storms are most common in September and October. Havana is the largest city and capital; other major cities include Santiago de Cuba and Camagüey. Better known smaller towns include Baracoa which was the first Spanish settlement on Cuba, Trinidad, a UNESCO world heritage site, and Bayamo.
Nickel industry
Cuba has had until recently one of the America's most productive and long standing nickel mines.
Oil wealth
Recent oil exploration has revealed that the North Cuba Basin has approximately 4.6 billion to 9.3 billion barrels of oil in it, which Cuba has now started to test-drill (as of 2006).
Society
Education
Before and during the present government Cuba boasted some of the highest rates of education and literacy in the Americas.[17] [18] <ref> Renaissance and decay: A comparison of socioeconomic indicators
. University of Texas
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> The Cuban state, through tax receipts, funds education for all Cuban citizens including university education. Private educational institutions are not permitted. School attendance is compulsory from ages six to the end of basic secondary education (normally at 15), and all students, regardless of age or gender, wear school uniforms with the color denoting grade level. Primary education lasts for six years, secondary education is divided into basic and pre-university education. Higher education is provided by universities, higher institutes, higher pedagogical institutes, and higher polytechnic institutes. The University of Havana was founded in 1728 and there are a number of other well established colleges and universities. The Cuban Ministry of Higher Education also operates a scheme of distance education which provides regular afternoon and evening courses in rural areas for agricultural workers. Education has a strong political and ideological emphasis, and students progressing to higher education are expected to have a commitment to the goals of the Cuban government.<ref>The Cuban Education System: Lessons and Dilemmas. Human Development Network Education. World Bank.</ref> Cuba has also provided state subsidized education to foreign nationals, including U.S. students, who are trained as doctors at the Latin American School of Medicine. The program provides for full scholarships, including accommodation, and its graduates are meant to return to their countries to offer low-cost healthcare.[19][20] Internet access is limited <ref> Resolución 120 del 2007 del Ministro del MIC la cual está vigente desde el ·0 de Septiembre de 2007</ref>
It is required that all applicants to universities in Cuba gain a letter from the government (the "Committee for the Defence of the Revolution") <ref>http://www.cubaverdad.net/cdr.htm CDR</ref> stating that they have a good "political and moral background" in order to apply. There have been claims that such letters are withheld because of an applicant (or relative) being politically undesirable. The validity of these claim or how often letters are refused is not easily verifiable and so there is no consensus on whether this amounts to widespread political oppression or just a few isolated cases.
Public health
The Cuban government operates a much-lauded national health system and assumes full fiscal and administrative responsibility for the health care of its citizens. Historically, Cuba has long ranked high in numbers of medical personnel and has made significant contributions to world health since the 19th century [21]. Partisans of the Cuban government state that this is especially so since the revolution, claiming that no other developing country has a health system comparable to Cuba's.[citation needed] According to World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, life expectancy and infant mortality rates in Cuba have been comparable to Western industrialized countries since such information was first gathered in 1957. In depth examination of WHO statistics for Cuba reveals that these statistics are prepared by each government<ref>Pan American Health Organization Media:2004 Observatory of Human resources in Health. 134th session of the executive committee. Washington, D.C. U.S.A, 21-25 June 2004 Provisional Agenda Item 4.3 CE134/11 (Eng.) 18th May 2004. http://www.paho.org/english/gov/ce/ce134-11-e.pdf page 5 item “10. Gaps in data collection and limitations of data sources undermine efforts to address these issues. Data are generally collected from existing sources, such as personnel registries of ministries of health and social security institutions…”</ref> and published unchanged by WHO; thus they have been called into question.<ref>John Dorschner 2007 Nation's fabled healthcare may not be so healthy Miami Herald, January 28, 2007 p.1E. and more recently Katherine Hirschfeld
(2007)
. Re-examining the Cuban Health Care System: Towards a Qualitative Critique
. Retrieved on 2007-07-22. </ref>[22][23] Nevertheless, the CIA World Factbook cites life expectancy and infant mortality rates that are similar to those for the USA.<ref>CIA World Factbook (Cuba), last updated 19/7/2007 and (USA) last updated 19/7/2007</ref> It is not clear what sources the CIA used for this, since the data presented seems to be equivalent to that published by the Cuban government; this has led to suggestions that material prepared by Ana Belen Montes (a convicted Castro government agent) is still being used by the CIA. <ref>Scarborough, Rowan 2007 Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA Regnery Publishing, Inc. ISBN-10 1596985100 ISBN-13 978-1596985100</ref>.
A separate, second division of hospitals cares specifically for foreigners and diplomats. Many foreigners travel to Cuba for reliable and affordable health care.
Demographics
According to Cuba's Oficina Nacional de Estadisticas ONE 2002 Census, the Cuban population was 11,177,743,<ref> Government of Cuba
(2002)
. Cuban Census
. Retrieved on 2007-01-29. </ref> including:
- 5,597,233 men and
- 5,580,510 women.
The racial make-up was 7,271,926 whites, 1,126,894 blacks and 2,778,923 mulattoes (or mestizos).<ref> DePalma , Anthony
(July 5 1998)
. Cuban Site Casts Light on an Extinct People
. New York Times
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> The Chinese population in Cuba is descended mostly from indentured laborers who arrived in the 19th century to build railroads and work in mines. After the Industrial Revolution, many of these laborers stayed in Cuba because they could not afford return passage to China.
| Total | Men | Women | % Of Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| White | 7,271,926 | 3,618,349 | 3,653,577 | 65.05% |
| Black | 1,126,894 | 593,876 | 533,018 | 10.08% |
| Mulatto/Mestizo | 2,778,923 | 1,385,008 | 1,393,915 | 24.86%
<ref>http://www.cubagob.cu/otras_info/censo/tablas_html/ii_3.htm</ref> |
The population of Cuba has very complex origins and intermarriage between diverse groups is so general as to be the rule.
The ancestry of White Cuban (65.05%) comes primarily from the ethnically diverse Spanish nations
Other European people that have contributed include:
- Image:Flag of France.svg French<ref>Etat des propriétés rurales appartenant à des Français dans l'île de Cuba from http://www.cubagenweb.org</ref>
- Modèle:Country data Portugal Portuguese
- Image:Flag of Italy.svg Italians
- Image:Flag of Russia.svg Russians
During the 18th, 19th and early part of the 20th century, large waves of Canarian, Catalan, Andalusian and Galician emigrated to Cuba.
- Modèle:Country data Canary Islands Canarian people
- Modèle:Country data Catalonia Catalan people
- Modèle:Country data Andalusia Andalusian people
- Modèle:Country data Galicia Galician people
- Modèle:Country data Basque Country Basque people
Africans make up 10.08% to 24.86% of the population. The ancestry of black Cubans comes from the following groups:
- Image:Flag of the African Union.svg African
- Kongo (largest ethnic group brought to Cuba)
People from Asia (2%):
Minor but significant ethnic influx is derived from diverse peoples from Middle East:
- Modèle:Country data Israel Jews
- Modèle:Country data Lebanon Lebanese
- Modèle:Country data Palestine Palestinians
- Modèle:Country data Syria Syrians
The Cuban government controls the movement of people into Havana on the grounds that the Havana metropolitan area (home to nearly 20% of the country's population) is overstretched in terms of land use, water, electricity, transportation, and other elements of the urban infrastructure. There is a population of internal migrants to Havana nicknamed "Palestinos" (Palestinians); these mostly hail from the eastern region of Oriente.<ref>Castro’s Cuba in Perspective</ref> Cuba also shelters a population of non-Cubans of unknown size. There is a population of several thousand North African teen and pre-teen refugees.<ref> Sahrawi children inhumanely treated in Cuba, former Cuban official
. MoroccoTimes.com
(March 31 2006)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. Modèle:Dead link</ref>
Cuba's birth rate (9.88 births per thousand population in 2006)<ref>thepeninsulaqatar.com</ref> is one of the lowest in the Western Hemisphere. Its overall population has increased continuously from around 7 million in 1961 to over 11 million now, but the rate of increase has stopped in the last few decades, and has recently turned to a decrease, with the Cuban government in 2006 reporting the first drop in the population since the Mariel boatlift. The decrease in fertility rate - from 3.2 children per woman in 1970 to 1.38 in 2006 - is the third greatest in the Western Hemisphere, with only Guadeloupe and Jamaica showing larger decreases.<ref> United Nations World Fertility Patterns 1997
. un.org
(1997)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> Cuba, which has unrestricted access to legal abortion, has an abortion rate of 58.6 per 1000 pregnancies in 1996 compared to a Caribbean average of 35, a Latin American average of 27 (the latter mostly illegally performed), and a European average of 48. Additionally, contraceptive use is estimated at 79% (in the upper third of countries in the Western Hemisphere).<ref> Stanley K. Henshaw, Susheela Singh and Taylor Haas
. The Incidence of Abortion Worldwide . International Family Planning Perspectives, 1999, 25(Supplement):S30 – S38
. Retrieved on May 11 , 2006 .
This publication notes, however, that: The relatively high rate in Cuba (78 per 1,000 [women, per year]) includes menstrual regulation, an early abortion procedure carried out without pregnancy testing, as well as termination of known pregnancies. In 1996, 60% of the procedures were menstrual regulations.</ref> With its high abortion rate, low birth rate, and aging population, Cuba's demographic profile more resembles those of former Communist Eastern European countries such as Poland or Ukraine rather than those of its Latin American and Caribbean neighbors.
Immigration and emigration have had noticeable effects on the demographic profile of Cuba during the 20th century. Between 1900 and 1930, close to a million Spaniards arrived from Spain; many of these and their descendentsleft after the Castro government took power. On a smaller scale, of thousands of Jewish immigrants who arrived prior during and after WWII, more than 90% have left Cuba.<ref>Asís, Moisés 2000 Judaism In Cuba 1959 – 1999 ICCAS Occasional Paper Series December 2000 http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuban-jews.htm “However, it was a paradox that Jews, who historically have been involved in social reforms and revolutions because it is a part of Judaism to look forward to a world of justice and peace, took a different approach: 94 percent of the 15,000 Cuban Jews left the country in the first years of the Revolution and went to the United States, Israel, Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, and other countries. The history of the Jewish community of Cuba during the past 40 years is the history of the remaining 6 percent of a successful and proud community; it is the history of those who stayed and their children”</ref>
Exodus
The Cuban exodus, which is primarily based on political dissent coupled with the failure of the system to provide neither freedom nor economic well being has lasted almost half a century and has brought more than two million Cubans of all social classes to the United States.<ref>Pedraza, Silvia 2007 Political Disaffection in Cuba's Revolution and Exodus (Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics)) Cambridge University Press ISBN-10 0521687292, ISBN-13 978-0521687294 p. 2 and many other sections of this book</ref> Others have left for Spain, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, and other countries. It still is standard procedure for the Cuban government to strip almost all property from most of those leaving the island.[citation needed]
Since 1959, over a million Cubans have left the island, primarily to Miami, Florida, where a vocal, well-educated and economically successful exile community exists (Cuban-American lobby).<ref> Quiñones , Rolando García Quiñones
. International Migrations in Cuba: persinting trends and changes . Technical Corporation
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> The emigration that occurred immediately after the Cuban Revolution was primarily of the upper and middle classes that were predominantly white, thus contributing to a demographic shift along with changes in birth rates and racial identifications among the various ethnic groups. Seeking to normalize migration between the two countries—particularly after the chaos that accompanied the Mariel boatlift—Cuba and the United States in 1994 agreed (in what is commonly called the 1994 Clinton-Castro accords<ref> Bill Clinton 1993-2001
. history.acusd.edu
. Retrieved on 2006-02-09. </ref>) to limit emigration to the United States. Under this, the United States grants a specific number of visas to those wishing to emigrate (20,000 since 1994) while those Cubans picked up at sea trying to emigrate without a visa are returned to Cuba. U.S. law gives the Attorney General the discretion to grant permanent residence to Cuban natives or citizens seeking adjustment of status if they have been present in the United States for at least one year after admission or parole and are admissible as immigrants;<ref> Cuban Natives or Citizens Seeking Lawful Permanent Resident Status
. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
(1996)
. Retrieved on 2006-05-06. </ref> these escapes are often daring and most ingenious.<ref> Dream Machine: Cub
. Palm Beach Post
. Retrieved on 2007-03-07. </ref><ref> Jane Sutton
. Cubans sneak ashore during U.S. security drill . International Family Planning Perspectives, 1999, 25(Supplement):S30 – S38
. Retrieved on Mar 8 , 2007 . Modèle:Dead link While hundreds of U.S. law enforcement agents intercepted imaginary Cuban migrants during a massive training exercise in south Florida, two boatloads of actual Cubans sneaked ashore on Miami Beach on Thursday.</ref> In 2005 an additional 7,610 Cuban emigrants from Cuba entered the United States by September 30.[citation needed] Citizens of Cuba must obtain an exit permit before they may leave the country legally.[citation needed] Human Rights Watch has criticized the Cuban restrictions on emigration and its alleged keeping of children as "hostages" in order to prevent defection by Cubans traveling abroad.<ref> Human Rights Overview: Cub
. hrw.org
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref><ref>http://www.haciendapub.com/castro20.html</ref> Over the years, thousands of Cubans have attempted to escape across the Florida Strait to reach the United States. A very large number of Cubans have made it to the U.S. (over a hundred thousand in the Mariel Boatlift alone). But it has been estimated that between 30,000 to 40,000 Cubans may have perished attempting to flee the island.<ref>Faria, Miguel A. Cuba in Revolution—Escape From a Lost Paradise, 2002, Hacienda Publishing, Inc., Macon, Georgia, pp. 415-416.</ref> At present escape through Mexico is favored.<ref>Rush of Cuban migrants use Mexican routes to U.S.</ref>
Religion
Cuba has a multitude of faiths reflecting the island’s diverse cultural elements. Catholicism, which was brought to the island by Spanish colonists at the beginning of the 16th century, is the most prevalent professed faith. After the revolution, Cuba became an officially atheistic state and restricted religious practice. Since the Fourth Cuban Communist Party Congress in 1991, restrictions have been eased and, according to the National Catholic Observer, direct challenges by state institutions to the right to religion have all but disappeared,<ref name="catholic">Catholic church in Cuba strives to reestablish the faith National Catholic Observer</ref> though the church still faces restrictions of written and electronic communication, and can only accept donations from state-approved funding sources.<ref name="catholic"/> The Roman Catholic Church is made up of the Cuban Catholic Bishops' Conference (COCC), led by Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, Cardinal Archbishop of Havana.[citation needed] It has eleven dioceses, 56 orders of nuns and 24 orders of priests. In January 1998, Pope John Paul II paid a historic visit to the island, invited by the Cuban government and Catholic Church.
The religious landscape of Cuba is also strongly marked by syncretisms of various kinds. This diversity derives from West and Central Africans who were transported to Cuba, and in effect reinvented their African religions. They did so by combining them with elements of the Catholic belief system, with a result very similar to Brazilian Umbanda. Catholicism is often practised in tandem with Santería, a mixture of Catholicism and other, mainly African, faiths that include a number of cult religions. Cuba’s patron saint, La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre (the Virgin of Cobre) is a syncretism with the Santería goddess Ochún. The important religious festival "La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre" is celebrated by Cubans annually on 8 September. Other religions practised are Palo Monte, and Abakuá, which have large parts of their liturgy in African languages.
Protestantism, introduced from the United States in the 18th century, has seen a steady increase in popularity. 300,000 Cubans belong to the island’s 54 Protestant denominations. Pentecostalism has grown rapidly in recent years, and the Assemblies of God alone claims a membership of over 100,000 people. The Episcopal Church of Cuba claims 10,000 adherents. Cuba has small communities of Jews, Muslims and members of the Bahá'í Faith.<ref> Government officials visit Baha'i center
. Baha'iWorldNewsService.com
(June 13 2005)
.</ref> Havana has just three active synagogues and no mosque<ref>http://www.islamawareness.net/LatinAmerica/cuba.html</ref>. Most Jewish Cubans are descendants of Polish and Russian Ashkenazi Jews who fled pogroms at the beginning of the 20th century. There is, however, a sizeable number of Sephardic Jews in Cuba, who trace their origin to Turkey (primarily Istanbul and Thrace). Most of these Sephardic Jews live in the provinces, although they maintain a synagogue in Havana. In the 1960s, almost 8,000 Jews left for Miami. In the 1990s, approximately 400 Jewish Cubans relocated to Israel in a co-ordinated exodus using visas provided by nations sympathetic to their desire to move to Israel.
Culture
Cuban culture is much influenced by the fact that it is a melting pot of cultures, primarily those of Spain and Africa. It has produced more than its fair share of literature, including the output of non-Cubans Stephen Crane, Grahame Greene and Ernest Hemingway
Sport is Cuba's national passion. Due to historical associations with the United States, many Cubans participate in sports which share popularity in North America, rather than sports traditionally promoted in other Latin American nations. Baseball is by far the most popular; other sports and pastimes in Cuba include basketball, volleyball, cricket, and athletics. Cuba is the dominant force in amateur boxing, consistently achieving high gold medal tallies in major international competitions. The government of Cuba however, will not be sending competitors to the "World Boxing Championships, based in the U.S. city of Chicago from October 21 to November 3; this to avoid the "theft" of athletes. the Cuban government official newspaper alleges:
- " As our people are all too well aware, the theft of anyone who stands out in Cuban society, whether s/he is an athlete, educationalist, doctor, artist, or any kind of scientist, has been the practice of various U.S. governments within that country’s constant policy of aggression against our people. That felony was instigated at the very triumph of the Revolution in 1959 with the exit of thousands of doctors and engineers." <ref>Granma 2007 Cuba will not be going to the World Boxing Championships. Digital Granma International Havana. August 30, 2007 http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/agosto/juev30/36boxeo.html</ref>
Cuban music is very rich and is the most commonly known expression of culture. The "central form" of this music is Son, which has been the basis of many other musical styles like salsa, rumba and mambo and an upbeat derivation of the rumba, the cha-cha-cha. Rumba music originated in early Afro-Cuban culture. The Tres was also invented in Cuba, but other traditional Cuban instruments are of African and/or Taíno origin such as the maracas, güiro, marímba and various wooden drums including the mayohuacan. Popular Cuban music of all styles has been enjoyed and praised widely across the world. Cuban classical music, which includes music with strong African and European influences, and features symphonic works as well as music for soloists, has also received international acclaim thanks to composers like Ernesto Lecuona.
Cuban literature began to find its voice in the early 19th century. Dominant themes of independence and freedom were exemplified by José Martí, who led the Modernist movement in Cuban literature. Writers such as Nicolás Guillén and Jose Z. Tallet focused on literature as social protest. The poetry and novels of José Lezama Lima have also been influential. Writers such as Reinaldo Arenas, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and more recently Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Daína Chaviano, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, and Zoé Valdés have earned international recognition in the postrevolutionary era, though many of these writers have felt compelled to continue their work in exile due to ideological control of media by the Cuban authorities.
Cuban cuisine is a fusion of Spanish and Caribbean cuisines. Cuban recipes share spices and techniques with Spanish cooking, with some Caribbean influence in spice and flavor. Now food rationing, which has been the norm in Cuba for the last four decades, restricts the common availability of these dishes. <ref> José, Alvarez 2000 Rationed Products and Something Else: Food Availability and Distribution in 2001 Cuba in Transition 11 pp. 305-322 http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/asce/pdfs/volume11/alvarez.pdf “To blame the U.S. economic sanctions for the existence of a rationing system of basic food products is not a very intelligent argument to justify Cuba’s socialist system. It is an admission that Cubans cannot even produce what grows very easily on Cuban soil. If one lists the food products that have been rationed since 1962, it becomes evident that almost all of them were in abundance before the 1959 revolution. Granted, all Cubans were not able to consume a wide variety of products because the instrument for rationing was the price system. But even after the rationing system was established, there have been periods in which the abundance of several products demonstrated the feasibility of returning to a stable and ample supply of food products. I remember the proliferation of a chain of government stores called FrutiCuba devoted exclusively to the selling of numerous fruits and vegetables in the mid-1960s. The existence of the free farmers’ markets in the 1980s, the free agricultural markets after 1994, and the new food outlets described below testify to the ability of Cuban farmers, now including urban inexperienced farmers, to produce abundant food supplies despite the U.S. economic sanctions, that could do away with the food rationing system. It is interesting to recall that, when the Soviet bloc was subsidizing the Cuban economy to the tune of five billion dollars per year, food was still rationed in Cuba.”</ref> Traditional Cuban meal would not be served in courses; rather all food items would be served at the same time. The typical meal could consist of plantains, black beans and rice, ropa vieja (shredded beef), Cuban bread, pork with onions, and tropical fruits. Black beans and rice, referred to as Platillo Moros y Cristianos (or moros for short), and plantains are staples of the Cuban diet. Many of the meat dishes are cooked slowly with light sauces. Garlic, cumin, oregano and bay leaves are the dominant spices.
Economy
- Main Articles: Economy of Cuba, Tourism in Cuba, Rationing in Cuba, Sociolismo
The Cuban Government adheres to socialist principles in organizing its largely state-controlled planned economy. Most of the means of production are owned and run by the government and most of the labor force is employed by the state. Recent years have seen a trend towards more private sector employment. By the year 2006, public sector employment was 78% and the private sector at 22% compared to the 1981 ratio of 91.8% to 8.2%.<ref> Social Policy
(PDF) . oxfamamerica.org
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. Modèle:Dead link</ref> Capital investment is restricted and requires approval by the government. The Cuban government sets most prices and rations goods to citizens. Moreover, any firm wishing to hire a Cuban must pay the Cuban government, which in turn will pay the company's employee in Cuban pesos.[citation needed]
While the form of government of Cuba is theoretically opposed to class privilege, preferential treatment exists for those who are members of the Communist Party or who hold positions of power within the government. <ref>http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/Research_Studies/BLatell.pdf</ref> Access to transportation, work, housing, university education and better health care are a function of status within the government or the Communist Party. <ref>http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/cuba/Cuba996-09.htm</ref>
Starting in the late 1980s, the Soviet subsidies for Cuba's state-run economy started to dry up. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba depended on Moscow for sheltered markets for its exports and substantial aid. The Soviets had been paying above-market prices for Cuban sugar, while providing Cuba with petroleum at below-market prices. The removal of these subsidies sent the Cuban economy into a rapid depression known in Cuba as the Special Period. At one point, Cuba received subsidies amounting to six billion dollars. In 1992, the United States tightened the trade embargo. Some believe that this may have contributed to a drop in Cuban living standards which approached crisis point within a year.<ref> Social Policy
(PDF) . oxfamamerica.org
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref>
Like some other Communist and post-Communist states following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba took limited free market-oriented measures to alleviate severe shortages of food, consumer goods, and services to make up for the ending of Soviet subsidies. These steps included allowing some self-employment in certain retail and light manufacturing sectors, the legalization of the use of the U.S. dollar in business, and the encouragement of tourism. In 1996 tourism surpassed the sugar industry as the largest source of hard currency for Cuba. Cuba has tripled its market share of Caribbean tourism in the last decade, with large investment in tourism infrastructure this growth rate is predicted to continue.<ref>Nicolás Crespo and Santos Negrón Díaz, "Cuban tourism in 2007: economic impact", (University of Texas, accessed on 2006-07-09)</ref> 1.9 million tourists visited Cuba in 2003 predominantly from Canada and the European Union, generating revenue of $2.1 billion.<ref> Background Note: Cuba
. U.S. Department of State
(December 2005)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> The rapid growth of tourism during the Special Period had widespread social and economic repercussions in Cuba. This has led to speculation of the emergence of a two-tier economy<ref>http://www.uiowa.edu/ifdebook/conferences/cuba/TLCP/Volume%201/Facio.pdf Tourism in Cuba during the Special Period</ref> and the fostering of a state of tourist apartheid on the island.[24]
The Cuban government has significantly developed its medical tourism capabilities as a key means to generate income for the country. For many years, Cuba has operated a special division of hospitals that treated foreigners and diplomats while excluding Cubans. Every year, thousands of European, Latin American, Canadian and American consumers with hard cash visit to access medical care services at up to 80 percent less than U.S. costs. There are some who criticize Cuba's medical tourism industry because ordinary Cubans do not have access to the kind of quality healthcare that medical tourists receive. [25][26]
Since 1959, Cuba has experienced slow growth in its Gross Domestic Product relative to other countries that were in a similar situation in the 1950s [27], stagnant trade. [28] and amassed a significant debt amounting to some 16.62 billion in convertible currency and 15 to 20 billion dollars with Russia. [29] [30] [31] Cuban citizens themselves have experienced a decrease in their caloric intake and a shortage of housing.
For some time now, Cuba has been experiencing a housing shortage because of the state's failure to keep pace with increasing demand. [32] Moreover, the government instituted food rationing policies in 1962, which were exacerbated following the collapse of the Soviet Union and, according to supporters of the government, the tightening of the US embargo.As late as 2001, studies have shown that the average Cuban's standard of living was lower than before the downturn of the post-Soviet period. Paramount issues have been state salaries failing to meet personal needs under the state rationing system chronically plagued with shortages. As the variety and amount of rationed goods available declined, Cubans increasingly turned to the black market to obtain basic food, clothing, household, and health amenities. The informal sector is characterized by what many Cubans call sociolismo.In addition, petty corruption in state industries, such as the pilferage of state assets to sell on the black market, is still common.<ref> Schweimler , Daniel
(May 4th 2001)
. Cuba's anti-corruption ministry
. BBC News
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> In recent years, since the rise of Venezuela's Socialist President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan economic aid has enabled Cuba to improve economically. Venezuela's assistance of the Cuban economy comes chiefly through its supply of up to 80,000 barrels of oil per day in exchange for professional services and agricultural products. In the last several years, Cuba has rolled back some of the market oriented measures undertaken in the 1990s. In 2004, Cuban officials publicly backed the Euro as a "global counter-balance to the U.S. dollar," and eliminated the US currency from circulation in its stores and businesses. Increased US government restrictions on travel by Cuban-Americans and on the numbers of dollars they could transport to Cuba strengthened Cuban government control over dollars circulating in the economy. In the last decade, Cubans had received between US$600 million and US$1 billion annually, mostly from family members in the U.S.<ref> Background Note: Cuba
. U.S. Department of State
(December 2005)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref>. This number is influenced by the fact that U.S. government forbids its citizens to send more than $1,200 to Cuba to immediate family members, and then only once per year.
In 2005 Cuba exported $2.4 billion, ranking 114 of 226 world countries, and imported $6.9 billion, ranking 87 of 226 countries.<ref> Rank Order Exports
. CIA:The World Fact Book
(June 29 2006)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> Its major export partners are the Netherlands 18.5%, Canada 18.5%, China 16%, Bermuda 14.1%, Spain 5.1%; major import partners are Venezuela 27%, China 15.8%, Spain 9.7%, Germany 6.5%, Canada 5.6%, Italy 4.4%, US 4.4% (2006).<ref> Cuba
. CIA World Fact Book
(June 29 2006)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> Cuba's major exports are sugar, nickel, tobacco, fish, medical products, citrus, and coffee;<ref> Cuba Exports - commodities
. IndexMundi.vom
(January 1 2005)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> imports include food, fuel, clothing, and machinery. Cuba presently holds debt in an amount estimated to be $13 billion,<ref> Calzon , Frank
(March 13 2005)
. Cuba makes poor trade partner for Louisiana
. ShreveportTimes.com
. Retrieved on 2005-12-21. </ref> approximately 38% of GDP.<ref> Rank Order - GDP (purchasing power parity)
. CIA Fact Book
(June 29 2006)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> According to the Heritage Foundation, Cuba is dependent on credit accounts that rotate from country to country.<ref> Cuba
. heritage.org
(2004)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> Cuba's prior 35% supply of the world's export market for sugar has declined to 10% due to a variety of factors, including a global sugar commodity price drop making Cuba less competitive on world markets.<ref> Cuba’s Sugar Industry and the Impact of Hurricane Michele
. International Agricultural Trade Report
(December 6 2001)
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> At one time, Cuba was the world’s most important sugar producer and exporter. As a result of diversification, underinvestment and natural disasters, however, Cuba's sugar production has seen a drastic decline. In 2002, more than half of Cuba's sugar mills were shut down. Cuba's most recent sugar harvest of 1.1 million metric tons was its worst in nearly one hundred years, comparable only to those of 1903 and 1904. Cuba holds 6.4% of the global market for nickel<ref> Global Nickel Mine Production 2002
(2002)
. Retrieved on 2006-08-23. </ref> which constitutes about 25% of total Cuban exports.<ref> Frank , Marc
(December 18 2002)
. Cuba's 2002 nickel exports top 70,000 tonnes
. Center for International Policy
. Retrieved on 2006-07-09. </ref> Recently, large reserves of oil were found in the North Cuba Basin<ref> Smith-Spark , Laura
(2006)
. Cuba oil prospects cloud US horizon
. BBC
. Retrieved on 2006-12-09. </ref> leading US Congress members Jeff Flake and Larry Craig to call for a repeal of the US embargo of Cuba.[33]
Military
Under Fidel Castro, and partially because of invasions, assassination attempts and terrorist attacks, Cuba became a highly militarized society. From 1975 until the late 1980s, massive Soviet military assistance enabled Cuba to upgrade its military capabilities. Since the loss of Soviet subsidies Cuba has dramatically scaled down the numbers of military personnel, from 235,000 in 1994 to about 60,000 in 2003.<ref> Cuban army called key in any post-Castro scenario Anthony BoadleModèle:Dead link Reuters 2006 </ref> The government now spends roughly 1.7% of GDP on military expenditures. As with all Cuban government data this information is not independently corroborated(see Freedom of information in Cuba section on this page). The present Minister for the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) is Raúl Castro, Fidel Castro's brother, who had played a major part as a leader in the Cuban Revolution.[34][35]
See also
Modèle:Topics related to Cuba Modèle:Portal
Notes
External links
Modèle:Portal Modèle:Sisterlinks
- Official
- Modèle:En icon Granma — International edition of Communist Party of Cuba Newspaper
- Modèle:En icon Government of Cuba
- List of members of the Council of State
- Modèle:En icon Cuban News Agency — Cuban News
- (Spanish) http://www.cu/ — Cuban Portal
- General
- Cuban Website Links from tvwiki.tv
- Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports regarding Cuba
- Cuba Inside Out — History, currents, commentary, resources
- Full Text of the 1899 Cuban Census at University of South Carolina Library's Digital Collections Page
- Cuba - Historical Cuban collectibles documentaries. Bilingual
- About Cuba; Havana and Varadero
- Cuba Pictures
Modèle:Template group Modèle:Template group Modèle:Template groupaf:Kuba ang:Cūba ar:كوبا an:Cuba frp:Cuba ast:Cuba az:Kuba bn:কিউবা zh-min-nan:Cuba be:Куба be-x-old:Куба bo:ཀུ་བ bs:Kuba br:Kuba bg:Куба ca:Cuba cv:Куба ceb:Cuba cs:Kuba cy:Cuba da:Cuba de:Kuba dv:ކިއުބާ et:Kuuba el:Κούβα es:Cuba eo:Kubo (lando) eu:Kuba fa:کوبا fr:Cuba fy:Kuba ga:Cúbagl:Cuba ko:쿠바 hy:Կուբա hi:क्यूबा hsb:Kuba hr:Kuba io:Kuba ilo:Cuba bpy:কিউবা id:Kuba ia:Cuba is:Kúba it:Cuba he:קובה kn:ಕ್ಯೂಬಾ pam:Cuba ka:კუბა kk:Куба kw:Kuba sw:Kuba ht:Kiba ku:Kûba la:Cuba lv:Kuba lb:Kuba lt:Kuba lij:Cuba hu:Kuba mk:Куба ml:ക്യൂബ ms:Cuba nah:Copan na:Kiuba nl:Cuba (land) ja:キューバ no:Cuba nn:Cuba nov:Kuba oc:Cuba uz:Kuba pms:Cuba nds:Kuba pl:Kuba pt:Cuba ro:Cuba qu:Kuba ru:Куба sq:Kuba scn:Cubba simple:Cuba sk:Kuba sl:Kuba sr:Куба sh:Kuba fi:Kuuba sv:Kuba tl:Cuba ta:கியூபா kab:Kuba th:ประเทศคิวบา vi:Cuba tg:Кубо tr:Küba uk:Куба ur:کیوبا vo:Kubeän yi:קיובא zh-yue:古巴 diq:Kuba bat-smg:Kuba zh:古巴
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