Canada World War 2

Cuba is located in the Northern Caribbean and is in the

Caribbean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean and the gulf of Mexico. It

is off the cost of Florida in the United States. To its West is

Mexico and to its East is the Turks and Calicos Islands and

Haiti. Below it is Jamaica and the Cayman islands.

Cuba is the most popular country in the Caribbean. Its

culture and its customs are drawn from several different

types of people. The culture comes mostly from the

aboriginal Taino and Ciboney people, the Spanish colonialism

and the African slaves. It is prone to hurricanes because it is

close surrounded by the Caribbean Sea.

The recorded history of Cuba began on October

28,1492. Christopher Columbus saw the islands on his first

voyage and claimed it for Spain. It was being lived in by

Amerindian people known as the Taino and the Ciboney who

came from South America several centuries before

Christopher Columbus. Most of the Taino were farmers and

most of the Ciboney were hunters and gatherers.

The Coast of Cuba was fully mapped in 1511 by

Sebastian de Ocampo. That year Diego Velazquez de Cuellar

founded the Spanish settlement Baracoa. The Spanish

enslaved approximately 100,000 people on the island.

Cuba was in the possession of Spain for 388

years. It was ruled by a government in Havana and its

economy was based on plantation and agriculture and the

export of tobacco, coffee and sugar to Europe and later to

North America. It was taken from the Spanish by the British

in 1762, but it was taken back by the Spanish the next year.

In the 1820's, parts of Spain's empire in Latin America

rebelled and formed independent states but Cuba remained

loyal. There was some agitation for independence which

was partly because Europe was the main place that Cuba

exported it's goods. It was also partly because they were

afraid of the United States coming in more then they

disliked the Spanish colonial rule.

The official spoken language in Cuba is Spanish and its

natural resources are nickel, cobalt, iron, copper, ore, iron,

chromium, ore, salt timber, petroleum and arable land.

Since Cuba is so close to the United States it has been

influenced by them a lot in its history. Throughout the 19th

century there were southern U.S politicians that plotted to

add Cuba to the States to strengthen the pro-slavery forces

in the U.S. There was usually a party in Cuba which

supported that policy as well. In 1848, there was a rebellion

that was for adding Cuba to the United States but was

defeated. After that there were several attempts, by the

Americans that wanted them to join together, to invade the

islands from Florida.