Cuba

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Cuban Major General Antonio Maceo Grajales rejected the treaty on a meeting with Martinez Campos on March 15, 1878 at Maceo’s encampment in Baraguá. Eight days after this meeting, General Maceo circulated The Protest of Baraguá. He led his troops for a few more weeks against the Spanish. However, the treaty was acceptable to many of Cuba's elites, who had supported the rebellion but preferred reform to independence.

The Petition was however refused by the National Assembly, and a subsequent crackdown resulted in the imprisonment of 75 political prisoners for terms of up to 28 years on charges of collaborating with and receiving money from the US government.

Government efforts to lower subsidies to unprofitable enterprises and to shrink the money supply caused the semi-official exchange rate for the Cuban peso to move from a peak of 120 to the dollar in the summer of 1994 to 21 to the dollar by yearend 1999. Living conditions in 1999 remained well below the 1989 level. New taxes introduced in 1996 have helped drive down the number of self-employed workers from 208,000 in January 1996.

This Amendment also granted to the U.S. the right to establish naval bases on the island and, under its charter, the U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay was established in 1903.

Faced with a corrupt and ineffective military, dispirited by a U.S. Government embargo on weapons sales to Cuba and public indignation and revulsion at his brutality toward opponents, Batista fled on January 1, 1959. Within months of taking control, Castro moved to consolidate power by marginalizing other resistance figures and imprisoning or executing opponents. As the revolution became more radical, hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled the island.

Many of the Conquistadors intermarried with Native Cuban Indians. Their children were called mestizo, but the Native Cubans called them Guajiro, which translates as "one of us". Today, the descendants are maintaining their heritage.

When the USSR's support was lost, Cuba's economy was essentially paralyzed, and living conditions in Cuba worsened. This led Castro to open the country to tourism from Europe and Asia, and to enter into several joint ventures with foreign companies for hotel, agricultural and industrial projects. As a result, the use of U.S. dollars was legalized in the late 1990s, with special stores being opened which only sell in dollars.

The Cuban Government continues to adhere to socialist principles in organizing its state-controlled economy. Most of the means of production are owned and run by the government and about 75 percent of the labour force is employed by the state. The state under the durable leadership of Fidel Castro plays the primary role in the domestic economy and controls practically all foreign trade.

In 2001, a group backed by the powerful Catholic church collected thousands of signatures for the Varela Project, a petition requesting a referendum on the island's political system. The process was openly supported by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter during his historic 2002 visit to Cuba. A plebiscite then was made in which it was formally proclaimed that Castro's brand of socialism would be perpetual.

The religious landscape of Cuba is strongly marked by syncretisms of various kinds. Though officially Cuba is an atheist state, religious practice is allowed and, especially since 1992, common. Though the papal visit to Cuba has strengthened official Catholicism, most Cubans share a motley of faiths that include popular Catholicism, over 50 versions of Protestantism, spiritism, African-derived beliefs.

The most important currents of these are Regla de Ocha (known as Santería), which derives from Yoruban religion, Regla de Palo Monte, which derives from Congo-based religions, and the Sociedad Secreta Abakuá, which derives from the secret men's societies in the region of Calabar, in south-eastern Nigeria. Other religious manifestations include freemasonry and pentecostal churches.

Cuba failed to prosper before the 1760s due to Spanish trade regulations. Spain had set up a monopoly in the Caribbean and their primary objective was to protect this. They did not allow the islands to trade with any foreign ships.

Cervera attempted an escape on July 3 beginning the Naval Battle of Santiago de Cuba. In a matter of hours, Cervera's fleet was destroyed, ensuring a swift end to the war. On October 1, Spain capitulated in the Treaty of Paris, yielding to the United States the territories of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands.

The Cuban economy was hit hard in the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Comecon economic bloc, with which it had traded predominantly. More recent problems include high oil prices, recessions in key export markets such as sugar and nickel, damage from hurricanes (most recently an estimated 1 billion dollars economic damage from hurricane Charley), depressed tourism, and faltering world economic conditions. In late 2003, and early 2004, both tourism levels and nickel prices increased.

One other factor in the recovery of the Cuban economy is the remittances of Cuban-Americans (which constitute almost 3% of the Cuban Economy, by some estimates). Cuba currently trades with almost every nation in the world (including the U.S.). However, Cuba owes billions in Paris Club debt to nations such as France, Japan and Germany.

Cuba News and Cuba online resources.