Cuba

Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country in the Caribbean. It comprises the eponymous main island as well as 4,195 islands, islets, and cays. Situated at the convergence of the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean, Cuba is located east of the Yucatán Peninsula, south of both Florida and the Bahamas, west of Hispaniola, and north of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Cuba is the largest country in the Caribbean by area and the third-largest by population, after Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Culturally, Cuba is considered to be part of Latin America. Its capital and largest city is Havana. Cuba was inhabited as early as the 4th millennium BC, with the Guanahatabey and Taíno peoples present at the time of Spanish colonization in the 15th century. Cuba's population descends primarily from three groups: pre-Columbian indigenous peoples, chiefly the Taíno and Ciboney, Spanish settlers and immigrants (mainly from Andalusia, the Canary Islands, Galicia, and Asturias), and sub-Saharan Africans brought through the transatlantic slave trade. The territory remained part of the Spanish Empire until the Spanish–American War of 1898, after which it was occupied by the United States and gained independence in 1902. A 1933 coup toppled the democratically elected government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada and began a long period of military influence, particularly by Fulgencio Batista. In 1940, Cuba implemented a new constitution, but mounting political unrest culminated in the 1952 Cuban coup d'état. Batista's autocratic government was eventually overthrown in January 1959 by the 26th of July Movement, during the Cuban Revolution. The revolution established a communist government under Fidel Castro that remains to this day. Castro's government became a major point of contention between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War; the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is widely considered to be the closest the world has come to a nuclear war. During the 1970s through the late 1980s, Cuba intervened in numerous conflicts in support of anti-colonial and Marxist governments or movements across Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. According to a CIA declassified report, Cuba had received $33 billion in Soviet aid by 1984. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced a severe economic downturn in the 1990s, known as the Special Period. In 2008, Castro retired after 49 years; Raúl Castro was elected his successor. Raúl retired as president of the Council of State in 2018, and Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected president by the National Assembly following parliamentary elections. Raúl retired as First Secretary of the Communist Party in 2021, and Díaz-Canel was elected thereafter, becoming Cuba's first leader to have been born after the Cuban Revolution. Cuba is a socialist state in which the role of the Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Cuba is currently the world's only communist country outside of Asia. Cuba has an authoritarian government wherein political opposition is prohibited. Censorship is extensive, and independent journalism is repressed; Reporters Without Borders has characterized Cuba as one of the worst countries for press freedom. Cuba is a founding member of the UN, G77, NAM, OACPS, ALBA, and OAS. Since 1959, Cuba has regarded the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay as illegal and has maintained minefields along its side of the border since 1961. Cuba has one of the world's few command economies, and its economy is dominated by tourism and the exports of skilled labor, sugar, tobacco, and coffee. Cuba has historically—before and during communist rule—performed better than other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in literacy. After the 1959 revolution, Cuba performed better than other Latin American countries in infant and maternal mortality, and life expectancy. According to a 2012 study, Cuba is the only country in the world to meet the conditions of sustainable development put forth by the WWF. Cuba has a universal health care system that provides free medical treatment to all Cuban citizens, although challenges include low salaries for doctors, poor facilities, poor provision of equipment, and the frequent absence of essential drugs. A 2023 study by the US-funded Cuban Observatory of Human Rights estimated that 88% of the population lives in extreme poverty. According to the World Food Programme of the United Nations, rationed food meets only a fraction of daily nutritional needs for many Cubans, leading to health issues. Ongoing since 1960, the United States embargo against Cuba stands as one of the longest-running trade and economic measures in bilateral relations in history.