Background History

The history of cuba starts with the 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 within a few months, 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,” President Kennedy promised a U.S. blockade of Cuba to stop the missile delivery. 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 that their ranks were swelled with prisoners, mental patients, homosexuals, and others unwanted by the Cuban government.

 

Seventeen months after his emergency intestinal surgery, 81-year-old Castro released a public statement declaring that he was not healthy enough to campaign in the upcoming parliamentary elections, although he has not withdrawn from the election. Castro's announcement on January 2008, was followed by a national television broadcast showing a recent meeting between Castro and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil where he told the Brazilian president that he was feeling very well. During the Jan. 2008 parliamentary elections, both Fidel and Raúl Castro were reelected to the National Assembly as well as 614 unopposed candidates. In Feb. 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 Feb. 24, 2008.

At the UN in Feb. 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 Covenants ensure citizens' political and civil freedom, and 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. The government relaxed land restrictions for private farmers in July 2008, in an effort to boost the country's poor food production and reduce dependence on food imports. The U.S. Congress voted in March 2009 to repeal the long-standing restrictions on Cuban-Americans visiting Havana and sending money into the country. President Obama has signaled a willingness to establish warmer ties with Cuba, a subtle acknowledgement that isolation has not been effective in forcing the Castro regime from power. Castro made the surprise announcement in July 2010 that he plans to release 52 political prisoners. The prisoners—activists and journalists—have been held since a 2003 crackdown on dissidents. Fidel Castro said the activists were "mercenaries" acting at the request of the United States.