During the 1970s through the late 1980s, Cuba intervened in numerous conflicts in support of anti-colonial and Marxist governments or movements across Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. According to a CIA declassified report, Cuba had received $33 billion in Soviet aid by 1984. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced a severe economic downturn in the 1990s, known as the Special Period. In 2008, Castro retired after 49 years; Raúl Castro was elected his successor. Raúl retired as president of the Council of State in 2018, and Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected president by the National Assembly following parliamentary elections. Raúl retired as First Secretary of the Communist Party in 2021, and Díaz-Canel was elected thereafter, becoming Cuba's first leader to have been born after the Cuban Revolution.
Cuba has one of the world's few command economies, and its economy is dominated by tourism and the exports of skilled labor, sugar, tobacco, and coffee. Cuba has historically—before and during communist rule—performed better than other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in literacy. After the 1959 revolution, Cuba performed better than other Latin American countries in infant and maternal mortality, and life expectancy. According to a 2012 study, Cuba is the only country in the world to meet the conditions of sustainable development put forth by the WWF. Cuba has a universal health care system that provides free medical treatment to all Cuban citizens, although challenges include low salaries for doctors, poor facilities, poor provision of equipment, and the frequent absence of essential drugs. (Full article...)
Though sentenced to terms of up to 15 years for their roles in the attack, all of the rebels were released after an amnesty granted by Fulgencio Batista in 1955. Castro relocated to Mexico, before returning to Cuba on the Granma yacht in December 1956. (Full article...)
Image 17A 1736 colonial map by Herman Moll of the West Indies and Mexico, together comprising "New Spain", with Cuba visible in the center. (from History of Cuba)
Image 18Protests against the visit of Soviet diplomat Anastas Mikoyan, dispersed by a policeman firing his gun. (February 5, 1960) (from History of Cuba)
Image 33Rebel leaders engaged in extensive propaganda to get the U.S. to intervene, as shown in this cartoon in an American magazine. Columbia (the American people) reaches out to help oppressed Cuba in 1897 while Uncle Sam (the U.S. government) is blind to the crisis and will not use its powerful guns to help. Judge magazine, 6 February 1897. (from History of Cuba)
... that Los Errantes robbed banks in Cuba, Chile and Argentina before finally being caught attempting to assassinate Spanish king Alfonso XIII in France?
... that Cuba's Girardinus fish may have evolved into different species because the island's rivers are often interrupted by waterfalls or vanish underground?
... that Bob Barrabee studied tobacco farming in Cuba and played in the NFL in the same year?
... that after his movement's victory in the Cuban Revolution, television broadcasts showed Camilo Cienfuegos freeing parrots from birdcages, declaring that the birds had "a right to liberty"?
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Pierre Soulé, the driving force behind the Ostend Manifesto
The Ostend Manifesto, also known as the Ostend Circular, was a document written in 1854 that described the rationale for the United States to purchase Cuba from Spain while implying that the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused. Cuba's annexation had long been a goal of U.S. slaveholding expansionists. At the national level, American leaders had been satisfied to have the island remain in weak Spanish hands so long as it did not pass to a stronger power such as Britain or France. The Ostend Manifesto proposed a shift in foreign policy, justifying the use of force to seize Cuba in the name of national security. It resulted from debates over slavery in the United States, manifest destiny, and the Monroe Doctrine, as slaveholders sought new territory for the expansion of slavery.
During the administration of President Franklin Pierce, a pro-Southern Democrat, Southern expansionists called for acquiring Cuba as a slave state, but the outbreak of violence following the Kansas–Nebraska Act left the administration unsure of how to proceed. At the suggestion of Secretary of State William L. Marcy, American ministers in Europe—Pierre Soulé for Spain, James Buchanan for Britain, and John Y. Mason for France—met to discuss strategy related to an acquisition of Cuba. They met secretly at Ostend, Belgium, and drafted a dispatch at Aachen, Prussia. The document was sent to Washington in October 1854, outlining why a purchase of Cuba would be beneficial to each of the nations and declaring that the U.S. would be "justified in wresting" the island from Spanish hands if Spain refused to sell. To Marcy's chagrin, Soulé made no secret of the meetings, causing unwanted publicity in both Europe and the U.S. (Full article...)
Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda y Arteaga (March 23, 1814 – February 1, 1873) was a 19th-century Cuban-born Spanish writer. Born in Puerto Príncipe, now Camagüey, she lived in Cuba until she was 22. Her family moved to Spain in 1836, where she started writing as La Peregrina (The Pilgrim) and lived there until 1859, when she moved back to Cuba with her second husband until his death in 1863, after which she moved back to Spain. She died in Madrid in 1873 from diabetes at the age of 58.
She was a prolific writer and wrote 20 plays and numerous poems. Her most famous work, however, is the antislavery novel Sab, published in Madrid in 1841. The eponymous protagonist is a slave who is deeply in love with his mistress Carlota, who is entirely oblivious to his feelings for her. (Full article...)
...that soon after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Fidel Castro pledged to underwrite the debts of the Havana Sugar Kings baseball team, by playing an exhibition contest between his own pickup squad Los Barbudos ("The Bearded Ones") and a military police team?
... that Kid Chocolate became Cuba's first world boxing champion in 1931. On his retirement in 1938, he had a record of 135 wins, 9 losses and 6 draws? And that he was later recognized by the International Boxing Hall Of Fame?
...that the International School of Havana was founded in 1965 by Phyllis Powers, a British expatriate, to educate the children of diplomatic staff?
...that Cupet is Cuba's state oil company and extracts around 80,000 barrels per day of heavy crude oil?
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