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Cuba
| Republic of Cuba National
name: República de Cuba President: Raúl Castro (2008)
Current government officials
Total area: 42,803 sq mi (110,860 sq
km) Population (2008 est.): 11,423,952
(growth rate: 0.2%); birth rate: 11.2/1000; infant mortality rate:
5.9/1000; life expectancy: 77.2; density per sq mi: 103
Capital and largest city (2003 est.):
Havana, 2,686,000 (metro. area), 2,343,700 (city
proper) Other large cities:
Santiago de Cuba, 554,400; Camagüey, 354,400; Holguin, 319,300;
Guantánamo, 274,300; Santa Clara, 251,800 Monetary unit: Cuban Peso
Language:
Spanish
Ethnicity/race:
mulatto 51%, white 37%, black 11%, Chinese
1%
National Holiday:
Triumph of the Revolution, December 10
Religions:
predominantly Roman Catholic and Santería
(Afro-Cuban syncretic religion) Literacy rate: 97% (2003 est.) Economic summary: GDP/PPP (2006 est.):
$45.51 billion; per capita $4,000 . Real growth rate: 9.5%.
Inflation: 5%. Unemployment: 1.9%. Arable land:
33%. Agriculture: sugar, tobacco, citrus, coffee, rice,
potatoes, beans; livestock. Labor force: 4.82 million; note:
state sector 78%, non-state sector 22% (2006 est.); agriculture 20%,
industry 19.4%, services 60.6% (2006). Industries: sugar,
petroleum, tobacco, construction, nickel, steel, cement, agricultural
machinery, pharmaceuticals. Natural resources: cobalt, nickel,
iron ore, copper, manganese, salt, timber, silica, petroleum, arable
land. Exports: $2.956 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.): sugar,
nickel, tobacco, fish, medical products, citrus, coffee.
Imports: $9.51 billion f.o.b. (2006 est.): petroleum, food,
machinery and equipment, chemicals. Major trading partners:
Netherlands, Canada, China, Russia, Spain, Venezuela, U.S., Italy,
Mexico (2004). Communications:
Telephones: main lines in use: 849,900 (2005); mobile cellular:
134,500 (2005). Radio broadcast stations: AM 169, FM 55,
shortwave 1 (1998). Television broadcast stations: 58 (1997). .
Internet hosts: 2,234 (2006). Internet users: 190,000
note: private citizens are prohibited from buying computers or
accessing the Internet without special authorization; foreigners may
access the Internet in large hotels but are subject to firewalls; some
Cubans buy illegal passwords on the black market or take advantage of
public outlets to access limited email and the government-controlled
"intranet" (2005). Transportation:
Railways: total: 4,226 km; in addition, 7,742 km of track is in
private use by sugar plantations (2004). Highways: total:
60,858 km; paved: 29,820 km (including 638 km of expressway); unpaved:
31,038 km (1999 est.). Waterways: 240 km (2004). Ports and
harbors: Cienfuegos, Cienfuegos, Havana, Matanza. Airports:
170 (2006 est.). International
disputes: US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay is leased to US and only
mutual agreement or US abandonment of the area can terminate the
lease.
Major sources and definitions
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Geography
The largest island of the West Indies group
(equal in area to Pennsylvania), Cuba is also the westernmost—just
west of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and 90 mi (145 km)
south of Key West, Fla., at the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico. The island
is mountainous in the southeast and south-central area (Sierra Maestra).
It is flat or rolling elsewhere. Cuba also includes numerous smaller
islands, islets, and cays.
Government
Communist state.
History
Arawak (or Taino) Indians inhabiting Cuba when
Columbus landed on the island in 1492 died from diseases brought by
sailors and settlers. By 1511, Spaniards under Diego Velásquez had
established settlements. Havana's superb harbor made it a common transit
point to and from Spain.
In the early 1800s, Cuba's sugarcane industry
boomed, requiring massive numbers of black slaves. A simmering
independence movement turned into open warfare from 1867 to 1878. Slavery
was abolished in 1886. In 1895, the poet José Marti led the
struggle that finally ended Spanish rule, thanks largely to U.S.
intervention in 1898 after the sinking of the battleship Maine in
Havana harbor.
An 1899 treaty made Cuba an independent republic
under U.S. protection. The U.S. occupation, which ended in 1902,
suppressed yellow fever and brought large American investments. The 1901
Platt Amendment allowed the U.S. to intervene in Cuba's affairs, which it
did four times from 1906 to 1920. Cuba terminated the amendment in
1934.
In 1933 a group of army officers, including army
sergeant Fulgencio Batista, overthrew President Gerardo Machado. Batista
became president in 1940, running a corrupt police state.
In 1956, Fidel Castro Ruz launched a revolution
from his camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains. Castro's brother Raul and
Ernesto (Ché) Guevara, an Argentine physician, were his top
lieutenants. Many anti-Batista landowners supported the rebels. The U.S.
ended military aid to Cuba in 1958, and on New Year's Day 1959, Batista
fled into exile and Castro took over the government.
The U.S. initially welcomed what looked like a
democratic Cuba, but a rude awakening came within a few months when Castro
established military tribunals for political opponents and jailed
hundreds. Castro disavowed Cuba's 1952 military pact with the U.S.,
confiscated U.S. assets, and established Soviet-style collective farms.
The U.S. broke relations with Cuba on Jan. 3, 1961, and Castro formalized
his alliance with the Soviet Union. Thousands of Cubans fled the
country.
In 1961 a U.S.-backed group of Cuban exiles
invaded Cuba. Planned during the Eisenhower administration, the invasion
was given the go-ahead by President John Kennedy, although he refused to
give U.S. air support. The landing at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961,
was a fiasco. The invaders did not receive popular Cuban support and were
easily repulsed by the Cuban military.
A Soviet attempt to install medium-range
missiles in Cuba—capable of striking targets in the United States
with nuclear warheads—provoked a crisis in 1962. Denouncing the
Soviets for “deliberate deception,” on Oct. 22 Kennedy said
that the U.S. would blockade Cuba so the missiles could not be delivered.
Six days later Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev ordered the missile sites
dismantled and returned to the USSR, in return for a U.S. pledge not to
attack Cuba.
The U.S. established limited diplomatic ties
with Cuba on Sept. 1, 1977, making it easier for Cuban Americans to visit
the island. Contact with the more affluent Cuban Americans prompted a wave
of discontent in Cuba, producing a flood of asylum seekers. In response,
Castro opened the port of Mariel to a “freedom flotilla” of
boats from the U.S., allowing 125,000 to flee to Miami. After the refugees
arrived, it was discovered their ranks were swelled with prisoners, mental
patients, homosexuals, and others unwanted by the Cuban government.
Cuba fomented Communist revolutions around the
world, especially in Angola, where thousands of Cuban troops were sent in
the 1980s.
Russian aid, which had long supported Cuba's
failing economy, ended when Communism collapsed in eastern Europe in 1990.
Cuba's foreign trade also plummeted, producing a severe economic crisis.
In 1993, Castro permitted limited private enterprise, allowed Cubans to
possess convertible currencies, and encouraged foreign investment in its
tourist industry. In March 1996, the U.S. tightened its embargo with the
Helms-Burton Act.
Christmas became an official holiday in 1997 for
the first time since the revolution, in response to Pope John Paul II's
1998 visit to Cuba, which raised hopes for greater religious freedom.
In June 2000, Castro won a publicity bonanza
when the Clinton administration sent Elian Gonzalez, a young Cuban boy
found clinging to an inner tube near Miami, back to Cuba. The U.S. Cuban
community had demanded that the boy remain in Miami rather than be
returned to his father in Cuba. By many accounts, the influential Cuban
Americans lost public sympathy by pitting political ideology against
familial bonds.
In March and April 2003, Castro sent nearly 80
dissidents to prison with long sentences, prompting an international
condemnation of Cuba's harsh crackdown on human rights.
The Bush administration tightened its embargo in
June 2004, allowing Cuban Americans to return to the island only once
every three years (instead of every year) and restricting the amount of
U.S. cash that can be spent there to $50 per day. In response, Cuba banned
the use of dollars, which had been legal currency in the country for more
than a decade.
In July 2006, Castro—hospitalized because
of an illness—turned over power temporarily to his brother
Raúl. In October it was revealed that Castro has cancer and will
not return to power.
In January 2008, 17 months after his emergency
intestinal surgery, 81 year old Castro wrote a public statement that he
was not healthy enough to campaign in the upcoming parliamentary
elections, though he has not withdrawn from the election. Castro's
announcement was followed by a national television broadcast showing a
recent meeting between himself and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of
Brazil where he told the Brazilian president that he was feeling very
good.
In the January 2008 parliamentary elections,
both Fidel and Raúl Castro were re-elected to the National Assembly
as well as the other 614 unopposed candidates presented to voters.
In February 2008, Fidel Castro ended 49 years of
power when he announced his retirement. The 81 year old, who ruled Cuba
since leading a revolution in 1959, said he would not accept another term
as President. Raúl Castro succeeded his brother, becoming the 21st
president of Cuba on February 24, 2008.
At the United Nations in February 2008, Foreign
Minister Felipe Pérez Roque signed the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic,
Social, and Cultural Rights. The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
ensures citizens political and civil freedom, and the Covenant on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights gaurantee the right to work, fair
wages, social security, education, and high standards of physical and
mental health. Roque also announced that in 2009 the United Nations Human
Rights Council will be allowed to examine Cuba at will.
In March 2008, the Cuban government lifted the
ban on purchasing computers and other consumer electronics including DVDs
and microwaves, which may signal greater tolerance of internet use in the
future.
See also Encyclopedia: Cuba
U.S. State Dept. Country Notes:
Cuba
National Statistical Office (In Spanish Only)
http://www.cubagob.cu/otras_info/estadisticas.htm .
Information Please® Database, © 2008 Pearson
Education, Inc. All rights reserved.
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