Cuba
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 589 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 authorized party,
the Cuban Communist Party (PCC).
History
The first Europeans to visit Cuba were those of the expedition of Christopher
Columbus in 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 in 1523 to replace the decimated
Indian population. Slavery was not abolished until 1886. Cuba was ceded
to the USA in 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
in 1901, but the USA retained its naval base and asserted a right to
intervene in internal affairs until 1934.
In 1933 an army sergeant, Fulgencio Batista, seized and held power
until he retired in 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 Ruz,
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.
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 Raśl as his deputy, and Che Guevara,
reputedly, as the next in command. In 1960 the USA 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.
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 USA 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 in 1965-72. In 1976
a referendum approved a socialist constitution, and Fidel Castro
and his brother were elected president and vice president.
|
English,
no information available