Cuba

Cuba is an island located in the Caribbean Sea, 90 miles south of Florida.

Slavery and other History

Cuba relied on slavery longer than any other nation or colony in the Western Hemisphere. Cuba had a slave trade from 1521 to the late 1870s, including the famous triangular trade. In 1868, a Creole farmer started a revolution for racial equality, freedom of speech and association. It was then a colony of Spain, which put down the insurgency after a ten-year struggle. In 1880, the Spanish Cortes approved the abolition law, which provided for an eight-year period of patronato (tutelage) for all slaves liberated according to the law. This only amounted to indentured servitude as slaves were required to spend those eight years working for their masters at no charge. On October 7, 1886, slavery was finally abolished in Cuba by a royal decree that also made the patronato illegal.

By 1895 it took 200,000 Spanish soldiers to suppress the Cuban independence movement. Americans were shocked at how Spain sent tens of thousands of Cubans to concentration camps, where many died of starvation or disease. However, publisher William Randolph Hearst fabricated a great number of these atrocities in an attempt to sell newspapers. When painter Frederic Remington wrote Hearst that 'there is no trouble (in Cuba) and there will be no war,' Hearst famously replied 'You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war.'

Pressure grew in the United States for President William McKinley to intervene, and when the U.S.S. Maine mysteriously blew up in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898 (probably due to an accident), President McKinley approved this Resolution of Congress:

Whereas the abhorrent conditions which have existed for more than three years in the island of Cuba, so near our own borders, have shocked the moral sense of the people of the United States, have been a disgrace to Christian civilization, culminating, as they have, in the destruction of a United States battle ship, with 266 of its officers and crew, while on a friendly visit in the harbor of Havana, and cannot longer be endured ...

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives ... That the people of the island of Cuba are and of right ought to be free.

Government

Cuba is a totalitarian regime. People will risk their lives to escape from it.

Cuba's lone party has been ruled by Fidel Castro since 1959, when, notably, Castro and Che Guevara led a revolution to overthrow Fulgencio Batista. In 1960, Cuba became a communist nation, and the United States and Cuba relationship went into turmoil. When Castro came to power he immediately quelled the severe corruption which was present in the country, including the eviction of several American mobsters effectively removing organised crime from the island.Template:Fact-political Castro's new government also closed down the gambling industry.

Relations between the United States and Cuba have been shaky at best since the revolution. In 1960, after officially declaring themselves communist, the US began a trade-embargo on Cuba that last to this day. Since coming to power, Cuban leader Fidel Castro has been the victim of over 670 CIA assassination attempts^{[Citation Needed]} and one American backed invasion (The Bay of Pigs). This was in an attempt to reinstate the pro-American dictatorial regime of Batista that was previously in charge. (This is similar to the US backing of war criminal General Pinochet over his democratically elected communist opponent).

Cuba currently enjoys what are among the highest literacy rates in South America .