The Republic of Cuba (pronounced /ˈkjuːbə/ ; Spanish: República de Cuba , ) is an island country in the Caribbean. It consists of the island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city. Cuba is home to over 11 million people and is the most populous insular nation in the Caribbean. Its people, culture, and customs draw from diverse 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.
Etymology
The name "Cuba" comes from the Taíno language and though the exact meaning is unclear, it may be translated either as "where fertile land is abundant" (cubao), or as "great place" (coabana). Additionally, there is the claim that native inhabitants called the island "Cubagua" in the Columbus era starting in 1542.
History
Main articles: History of Cuba and Timeline of Cuban historyEarly history
Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the island was inhabited by Native American peoples known as the Taíno and Ciboney whose ancestors migrated from the mainland of North, Central and South America several centuries earlier. The Taíno were farmers and the Ciboney were farmers and hunter-gatherers; some have suggested that copper trade was significant and mainland artifacts have been found.
On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed near what is now Baracoa, claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain, and named Isla Juana after Juan, Prince of Asturias. In 1511 the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa; other towns soon followed including the future capital, San Cristobal de la Habana founded in 1515. The Spanish enslaved the approximately 100,000 indigenous people who resisted conversion to Christianity, setting them primarily to the task of searching for gold, and within a century European infectious diseases had virtually wiped out the indigenous people.
Cuba remained a Spanish possession for almost 400 years (1511–1898), with an economy based on plantations agriculture, mining and the export of sugar, coffee and tobacco to Europe and later to North America. The work was done primarily by African slaves brought to the island when the British owned it in 1762. The small land-owning elite of Spanish settlers held social and economic power, supported by a population of Spaniards born on the island (Criollos), other Europeans, and African-descended slaves. In the 1820s, when the rest of Spain's empire in Latin America rebelled and formed independent states, Cuba remained loyal, although there was some agitation for independence, leading the Spanish Crown to give it the motto "La Siempre Fidelísima Isla" (The Always Most Faithful Island). This loyalty was due partly to Cuban settlers' dependence on Spain for trade, protection from pirates, protection against a slave rebellion and partly because they feared the rising power of the United States more than they disliked Spanish rule.
Independence from Spain was the motive for a rebellion in 1868 led by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, resulting in a prolonged conflict known as the Ten Years' War. The U.S. declined to recognize the new Cuban government, though many European and Latin American nations had done so. In 1878 the Pact of Zanjón ended the conflict, with Spain promising greater autonomy to Cuba. In 1879–1880, Cuban patriot Calixto Garcia attempted to start another war, known as the Little War, but received little support. Slavery was abolished in 1886, although the African-descended minority remained socially and economically oppressed. During this period, rural poverty in Spain provoked by the Spanish Revolution of 1868 and its aftermath led to increased Spanish emigration to Cuba. During the 1890s pro-independence agitation was revived in part 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 Spain's promises for economic reform in the Pact of Zanjón were kept.
In 1892, an exiled dissident, José Martí, founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party in New York, with the aim of achieving Cuban independence. In January 1895, Martí travelled to Montecristi, Santo Domingo to join the efforts of Máximo Gómez. Martí wrote down his political views in the Manifesto of Montecristi . Fighting against the Spanish army began in Cuba on 24 February 1895, but Marti was unable to reach Cuba until 11 April 1895. Marti was killed on 19 May 1895, in the battle of Dos Rios. His death immortalized him and he has become Cuba's national hero. Around 200,000 Spanish troops outnumbered the much smaller rebel army which relied mostly on guerrilla and sabotage tactics. The Spaniards began a campaign of suppression. General Valeriano Weyler, military governor of Cuba, herded the rural population into what he called reconcentrados , described by international observers as "fortified towns". These are often considered the prototype for 20th century concentration camps. Between 200,000 and 400,000 Cuban civilians died from starvation and disease in the camps, numbers verified by 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.
The U.S. battleship Maine arrived in Havana on 25 January 1898 to offer protection to the 8,000 American residents on the island; but the Spanish saw this as intimidation. On the evening of 15 February 1898, the Maine blew up in the harbor, killing 252 crew that night; another 8 died of their wounds in hospital over the next few days. A Naval Board of Inquiry, headed by Captain William Sampson, was appointed to investigate the cause of the explosion on the Maine . Having examined the wreck and taken testimony from eyewitnesses and experts, the board reported on 21 March 1898, that the Maine had been destroyed by "a double magazine set off from the exterior of the ship, which could only have been produced by a mine". The facts remain disputed today, although an investigation by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover in 1976 established that the blast was most likely a large internal explosion, caused by spontaneous combustion in inadequately ventilated bituminous coal which ignited gunpowder in an adjacent magazine. The board was unable to fix the responsibility for the disaster, but a furious American populace, fueled by an active press—notably the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst—concluded that the Spanish were to blame and demanded action. The U.S. Congress passed a resolution calling for intervention and President William McKinley complied. Spain and the United States declared war on each other in late April.
Modern history
After the Spanish-American War, Spain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris (1898), by which Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam were ceded to the U.S. for the sum of $20 million. Under the same treaty Spain relinquished all claim of sovereignty over the title to Cuba. Theodore Roosevelt, who had fought in the Spanish-American War and had some sympathies with the independence movement, succeeded McKinley as U.S. President in 1901 and abandoned the 20-year treaty proposal. Instead, Cuba gained formal independence from the United States on May 20, 1902 as the Republic of Cuba. Under the new 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, the U.S. leased the Guantánamo Bay naval base from Cuba.
In 1906, following disputed elections, the first president, Tomás Estrada Palma, faced an armed revolt by independence war veterans who defeated the meager government forces. The U.S. intervened by occupying Cuba and named Charles Edward Magoon as Governor for three years. For many years afterwards, Cuban historians attributed Magoon's governorship as having introduced political and social corruption. In 1908 self-government was restored when José Miguel Gómez was elected President, but the U.S. continued intervening in Cuban affairs. In 1912 the Partido Independiente de Color attempted to establish a separate black republic in Oriente Province, but were suppressed by General Monteagudo with considerable bloodshed.
During World War I, Cuba shipped considerable quantities of sugar to Britain, avoiding U-boat attack, by the subterfuge of shipping sugar to Sweden. The Menocal government declared war on Germany very soon after the U.S. did.
Despite frequent outbreaks of disorder, constitutional government was maintained until 1930, when Gerardo Machado y Morales suspended the constitution. During Machado's tenure, a nationalistic economic program was pursued with several major n
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