Cuba is an island state of Central America; it includes the homonymous island, the Isla de la Juventud and about 1600 islands and islets, including the archipelago of Camagüey and that of the Canarreos. The island of Cuba, the largest of the Greater Antilles, is located between the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and… Read More »
In the early days of colonization Cuba’s main resource was the breeding of cattle, which found and still finds, in part, soil suitable for its development over large areas. Currently there are about 4 million head, but they are mostly draft cattle, and therefore the part made in imports of meat for slaughter is considerable.… Read More »
Cuba is the largest of the Antilles and one of the largest and richest and most important islands in the New World. The surface of the republic which has its name from Cuba, and which on its own island brings together other minors, arranged on its boundary, measures 114,524 sq km, four times the area… Read More »
The Spanish government did not keep its promises of reform. The constitution of the metropolis was indeed proclaimed on the island, but the representation of Cuba in the Cortes of Madrid was always composed by a large majority of Spanish colonists rather than indigenous. Add to this the fact that the termination of customs reciprocity… Read More »
The actual conquest of the island, as mentioned (see above, Explorations), took place only 19 years after Columbus had landed there, thanks to Diego Velázquez, who was sent by the governor of Santo Domingo, Diego Colombo, seized the island (1511). The resistance opposed to him by the few indigenous tribes was weak, except for the… Read More »
On the dramatic plot of the love of a humble mulatto all the social environments and the most intense passions of the Cuban soul unfold, along the troubled and painful nineteenth century. Thus emerges in the literary life the passionate and vigorous psychology of the indigenous race: and a mestizo, Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés… Read More »
For three centuries, from the conquest until the end of the eighteenth century, Cuba offers no literary manifestation, although the first cultural clues can be felt since the establishment of the University of Havana (1728), held by the Dominicans until 1842. A late awakening is promoted by realist immigrants, who from the nearby lands crossed… Read More »
Population. – The census of June 1943 found a population of 4,778,583 residents (41.7 per sq. Km.), Divided as follows between the various provinces: The population of the main cities was as follows: Havana, 673,376 residents; Holguin, 171,997; Camaguey, 155,827; Santa Clara, 122,241; Santiago, 120,577; Sancti Spíritus, 104,578. Economic conditions. – All the main crops… Read More »
The Castro movement continued to lose its bite in almost the entire Latin American area, both for the material impossibility of spreading and for the appearance of factors that could not admit Castroism, such as the advent of the military in Brazil and of democracy. Christianity in Chile. However, in Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala, Bolivia and… Read More »
Castro’s increasingly violent attacks on the USA won the approval of the new African and Asian states; also in many Latin American countries, Castroism took on decidedly anti-American tones, especially in Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Venezuela and Mexico. Relations between Cuba and the USA entered a critical phase when Castro ordered the American embassy in Havana… Read More »
Population. – In July 1974, according to an estimate, 9,090,000 residents were exceeded. The last census, in November 1970, had ascertained a population of 8,533,404 residents, With a density of 75 residents per km 2. The growth coefficient in the last decade has averaged 2% per year. The demographic dynamics have undergone substantial changes in… Read More »
Cuban literature has certainly undergone a profound influence from the social upheavals of the last twenty years, but the results – at least for now – should rather be sought in a profound transformation of cultural structures (state and popular theaters, university reform, new international relations oriented rather towards the countries with a socialist regime,… Read More »
The years from 1960 to 1975, following the socialist political revolution, are of radical transformation for the whole urban and architectural sector at the most varied levels: from theoretical elaboration, to professional technical training, to technological development, to the overturning of the city-countryside relationship. As competent bodies, in the aftermath of the revolution, institutes were… Read More »
With the new constitution (1976) the administrative division of the country was changed, which was divided into 15 units (14 provinces, one of which formed by the urban area of the capital, plus the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud). Population. – Between the last two censuses (1970 and 1981) the population went from… Read More »
The 1970s saw a gradual institutionalization of the Cuban political system which, after the revolution, had maintained a provisional and relatively informal character: since 1959, pending a new constitution (that of 1940 had been replaced by a Ley fundamental), an organ main of the state power was the Council of Ministers, chaired by F. Castro,… Read More »
As often happened in other Latin American countries that had seen their literature go beyond national borders thanks to the presence of writers of great importance, even to Cuba authors of the stature of Carpentier, Cabrera Infante, Lezama Lima and Sarduy cloud the fame of writers of subsequent generations. Among the works of the late… Read More »
The efforts made by the authorities, in the years following the revolution, to cope with the pressing problem of the lack of housing had proved ineffective due to technical choices not calibrated on the real conditions in which they had to operate: in particular the planned use on large prefabrication scale had run aground in… Read More »
The first active symphony orchestra in Cuba, the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Habana, was founded in 1922 by G. Roig and E. Lecuona, and remained active until the 1940s. Two years later the Orquesta Filarmónica was established under the direction of P. Sanjuán and, starting from 1932, by A. Roldán, who contributed to making it… Read More »
The Lumière cinema arrives in Cuba in 1897 thanks to a Frenchman, G. Veyre, to whom we owe the first views shot in the country. The film trade took off rapidly from the beginning of the 20th century and in the 1910s a decent production of feature films developed. Díaz Quesada, author of the first… Read More »
On the international level, despite the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Colombia, Chile and Haiti (respectively in October 1993, April 1995 and February 1996), Cuba continued to remain excluded from the main Latin American economic and political institutions., as well as the possibility of accessing World Bank or IMF financing: breaking its isolation was in… Read More »
Fidel Castro was among those who would have stood in the parliamentary elections of 1952, had they not been canceled by the Batista coup. Born in 1926, he approached politics while studying law at the University of Havana and in 1947 he joined the so-called Partido ortodoxo, the Partido of the Cuban pueblo then founded… Read More »
Demography and economic geography Cuba is a state of insular Central America. The population (11,163,934 residents at the 2012 census, 11,258,597 residents according to an estimate by UNDESA, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, of 2014) remains almost unchanged over time, due to the large clandestine migratory flow (mainly directed towards the United… Read More »
Reached by Cuba Colombo (1492), Cuba was colonized by the Spaniards from 1511, assuming a strategic and commercial role in the trade between the mother country and the New World; hence the frequent raids of privateers and smuggling. In 1762 Havana underwent a brief British occupation (Seven Years War). The development, from the beginning of… Read More »
ART AND ARCHITECTURE The artistic testimonies of the colonial period, followed in the 19th century, are scarce and not very relevant. from a European-style academic production. In 1927 the Exposición de Arte Nuevo marks the beginning of modern painting in Cuba, opposed to the continuing academicism imparted by the Académia San Alejandro: the main representatives… Read More »
Socialism in the Tropics The island of rum, sugar cane, plantations, cheap holidays, Afro-Cuban music, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara… Cuba is, however, even more: it is an example, for better or for worse, of the profound signs of colonization and of how tiring, difficult and contradictory the search for freedom and justice can be… Read More »
The data on the population of Cuba result from the following table: Other cities (with more than 20,000 residents are the following: Caibarién (26,241); Cárdenas (52,251); Ciego de Ávila (99,254); Cienfuegos (98,658); Guantánamo (125,731); Güines (42,822); Holguín (226,644)); Manzanillo (95.924); Sagua la Grande (38.571); San Antonio de los Baños (33.447); Sancti-Spíritus (115.448). The “Gran Habana”,… Read More »
Population (p. 63). – The 1931 census gave a population of 3,962,344 residents (34.7 per sq. Km.), Which an evaluation in January 1936 raises to 4,290,000. The absolute and relative population data of the 1931 census for the various provinces are as follows: The population of the main cities was on the same date as… Read More »
The Republic of Cuba, an island in the Caribbean Sea, is one of the last socialist states to survive the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Since 1976 the Constitution has established the five-year election of the People’s Assembly, composed of 614 members, and its local branches, but to date there is only one… Read More »
In addition to the capital, Havana, which, due to its development and increasingly intimate relations with the neighboring United States, has long since surpassed the simple function of a local center, establishing itself among the most beautiful and richest metropolises in the New World, more than one city on the island has made significant progress… Read More »
The fall of the USSR (1991) led Cuba to a strong isolation, which together with the fall in the price of sugar and the continuation of the US embargo caused serious economic difficulties, with serious repercussions on the standard of living of the population, forced to face significant problems posed by the shortage of food… Read More »