1. A country on the island of Cuba.
2. The largest island in the West Indies.
3. City in Illinois (USA); zip code 61427.
4. City in Kansas (USA); zip code 66940.
5. City in Missouri (USA); zip code 65453.
6. Town in Alabama (USA); zip code 36907.
7. Village in New Mexico (USA); zip code 87013.
8. Village in New York (USA); zip code 14727.
Island country in the Caribbean Sea, the largest of the West Indies, off the S coast of Florida and to the E of Mexico.
government.
The 1976 constitution created a socialist state with the National Assembly of People's Power as its supreme organ. It consists of 510 deputies, since 1992 elected by universal suffrage for a five-year term, and elects 31 of its members to form the Council of State. It also elects the head of state, who is president of the council, head of government, and first secretary and chair of the political bureau of the only party, the Cuban Communist Party (PCC).
history.
The first Europeans to visit Cuba were those of the expedition of Christopher Columbus 1492, who found Arawak Indians there. From 1511 Cuba was a Spanish colony, its economy based on sugar plantations worked by slaves, who were first brought from Africa 1523 to replace the decimated Indian population. Slavery was not abolished until 1886. Cuba was ceded to the US 1898, at the end of the Spanish-American War. Under US administration, roads, communications, and health services were improved. A new judicial system was set up on the US model. However, early enthusiasm after independence from Spain soon faded. A republic was proclaimed 1901, but the US retained its naval base and asserted a right to intervene in internal affairs until 1934.
Batista dictatorship.
In 1933 an army sergeant, Fulgencio Batista, seized and held power until he retired 1944. In 1952 he regained power in a bloodless coup and began another period of rule that many Cubans found oppressive. In 1953 a young lawyer and son of a sugar planter, Dr Fidel Castro, tried to overthrow him but failed. He went into exile to prepare for another coup in 1956 but was again defeated. He fled to the hills with Dr Ernesto “Che” Guevara and ten others to form a guerrilla force.
revolution.
In 1959 Castro’s force of 5,000 guerrillas deposed Batista, to great popular acclaim. The 1940 constitution was suspended and replaced by a “Fundamental Law”, power being vested in a council of ministers with Castro as prime minister, his brother Raúl as his deputy, and Che Guevara, reputedly, as the next in command. In 1960 the US broke off diplomatic relations after all US businesses in Cuba were nationalized without compensation. In 1961 it went further, sponsoring a full-scale (but abortive) invasion, the Bay of Pigs episode. In Dec of that year Castro proclaimed a communist state whose economy would develop along Marxist-Leninist lines.
Cuban missile crisis.
In 1962 Cuba was expelled from the Organization of American States (OAS), which initiated a full political and economic blockade. A US trade embargo was also imposed. Castro responded by tightening relations with the USSR which, in the same year, supplied missiles with atomic warheads for installation in Cuba. The Cuban missile crisis brought the US and the USSR to the brink of nuclear war, but conflict was averted when the USSR agreed to dismantle the missiles at the US president's insistence.
With Soviet help, Cuba made substantial economic and social progress 1965–72. In 1976 a referendum approved a socialist constitution, and Fidel Castro and his brother were elected president and vice president.
foreign policy.
During the following five years Cuba played a larger role in world affairs, particularly in Africa, to the disquiet of the US. Reelected 1981, Castro offered to discuss foreign policy with the US but Cuban support for Argentina, against Britain, and for leftist rebels seeking to overthrow the repressive US-backed government of El Salvador caused continuing strains with the US.
communism reaffirmed.
Castro reaffirmed his communist orthodoxy in the light of events in eastern Europe 1989–90. The advent of Soviet leader Gorbachev and the USSR's abandonment of its policy of supporting Third World revolutions led to a curtailment of Cuba's foreign military interventions 1989, and in Sept 1991 the USSR announced the withdrawal of all Soviet troops.
refugee exodus.
The economy deteriorated during 1993 after the US tightened a 32-year-old trade embargo against Cuba, and in Sept Castro was forced to legalize private enterprise and to crack down on consequential black market activity. During the summer of 1994 refugees fled to Florida in increasing numbers and perilous circumstances (the Cuban government was suspected of encouraging the exodus as a means of pressurizing the US into lifting the embargo). In Sept 1994 the US signed an accord with Cuba ending its policy of granting immediate residency to Cuban asylum-seekers and committing it instead to accepting a minimum of 20,000 legal Cuban immigrants each year; in return Cuba was to take steps to deter its citizens from fleeing the island by sea and to prevent unsafe departures. Further market-orientated reforms were introduced Nov 1994 by the Cuban government but the US remained intransigent, refusing to lift its embargo despite UN condemnation. + prikaži više