Cuba: Difference between revisions

'''Cuba'''. A land where the music is good, the drink flows freely and the tourists come for both. Oh, and it's famous for its cigars.

A brief history of Cuba: Cuba was a island in the Caribbean inhabited by the native Tainos before the Spaniards arrived in the 1500s and colonized the place. The Tainos who weren't killed off through disease were assimilated into the colonist population. The Spanish colonists brought in African (mostly Yoruban, though they were from many different parts of Africa) slaves to operate plantations and such.

Eventually, the Spanish colonists became upset with Spain and started to fight a war of liberation, which was unpleasant enough ''before'' the United States, flexing its muscles on the world stage, became involved. It entered the war on the pretense of caring about Cuba's freedom and claiming that Spain had attacked the US, following the still-mysterious 1898 sinking of the ''USS Maine'' off the Cuban coast. The war became called the Spanish-American War; the US was victorious and Cuba became an American protectorate. During this time a chess player named Capablanca became famous around the world. He went on to become a Chess Master and is now regarded as one of the greatest players of all time.

The United States had plans for exploiting Cuba just as fiercely as the Spanish, but that sort of went awry when Cubans started asking for a greater voice in government. Under the terms of something known as the Platt Amendment, the US gave Cuba its nominal independence, though the American shadow continued to hover over Cuba thanks to Washington's cozy relations with president/dictator Fulgencio Batista; the establishment of the now-infamous Guantanamo Bay military base was just one of the many strings attached to the country's "freedom". Along with the US government and "legitimate" US businesses, the American mafia became heavily involved in the island, turning it into something like [[Las Vegas]] East. This state of affairs continued until the 1959 Cuban Revolution, in which [[Fidel Castro]] took over the country. The Castro regime's policies rapidly led to a complete breakdown of American/Cuban relationships, the eviction of the Mafia, and a total economic embargo.

From 1966 to 1989 Cuba would aid [[Angola]] in its military conflict against [[South Africa]] under apartheid (same apartheid as in ''[[Lethal Weapon]]'') in the 19601960s and financed a number of revolutionary insurgencies around the world, such as the Sandinista, or the [[South AfricanAfrica]]n Freedom movement, all considerconsidered terrorist organisations at the time by the departmentUS Department of stateState, unlike the Afghan mujahideenmujaheddin (see [[Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters]]). As a result of this, Castro is considered by some one of the founding fathers of [[Namibia]], Angola, and Free South Africa. [[Nelson Mandela]] and Fidel Castro arewere reported to be close friends. [[Che Guevara]] would die in such type of effort in [[Bolivia]], executed by CIA officers to avoid a trail, in 1967.

The status quo in Cuba tottered along until [[The Great Politics Mess-Up|the Soviet Union's collapse]] in the late 1980's. This had an immediate and devastating effect on the Cuban economy since USSR was the main commercial partner of Cuba for decades, while the U.SUS insisted on blockading the economy hoping the regime would collapse. In what is known as "the Special Period" (early 90s1990s), Cuba's economy suffered immensely, with simple necessities like toilet paper and food becoming even harder to find. Cuba started to focus more on tourism, and enough trade was attracted from Europe to prevent a descent into the [[Crapsack World]]-ness of some of its Caribbean neighbors. Cuba continues to suffer shortages of every dayeveryday commodities, a situation not helped by the ongoing US embargo, fiercely maintained through every US Presidential Administration for thea pasthalf fiftycentury until [[Barack Obama]] started to loosen (but not remove) yearsit.

Until his official retirement in 2008, Castro was one of the longest-serving leaders in world history who wasn't a monarch. His brother Raul has takentook over and he's no young 'un; what will happen after ''his'' passing is anyone's guess.

Some characteristics of Cuban Spanish include...:

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