Portal:Cuba

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Location of Cuba in the Caribbean
Republic of Cuba
República de Cuba (Spanish)

Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba, Isla de la Juventud, archipelagos, 4,195 islands and cays surrounding the main island. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean meet. Cuba is located east of the Yucatán Peninsula (Mexico), south of both the American state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic), and north of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Havana is the largest city and capital. Cuba is the third-most populous country in the Caribbean after Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with about 11 million inhabitants.

Cuba is one of a few extant socialist states, in which the role of the Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Cuba has an authoritarian regime where political opposition is not permitted. Censorship is extensive and independent journalism is repressed; Reporters Without Borders has characterized Cuba as one of the worst countries for press freedom. Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America. It is a multiethnic country whose people, culture and customs derive from diverse origins, including the Taíno Ciboney peoples, the long period of Spanish colonialism, the introduction of enslaved Africans and a close relationship with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. (Full article...)

Embarkation of the Catalan Volunteers from the Port of Barcelona by Ramón Padró y Pedret [es]
The Ten Years' War (Spanish: Guerra de los Diez Años; 1868–1878), also known as the Great War (Guerra Grande) and the War of '68, was part of Cuba's fight for independence from Spain. The uprising was led by Cuban-born planters and other wealthy natives. On 10 October 1868, sugar mill owner Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and his followers proclaimed independence, beginning the conflict. This was the first of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain, the other two being the Little War (1879–1880) and the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898). The final three months of the last conflict escalated with United States involvement, leading to the Spanish–American War. (Full article...)
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The following are images from various Cuba-related articles on Wikipedia.

Did you know (auto-generated)

  • ... that José Ramón Balaguer fought as a soldier-medic for Fidel Castro's rebel army before becoming Cuba's minister of public health?
  • ... that after his movement's victory in the Cuban Revolution, television broadcasts showed Camilo Cienfuegos freeing parrots from birdcages, declaring that the birds had "a right to liberty"?
  • ... that Rudi Kappel, co-founder of the first airline of Suriname, was arrested both on entering and leaving Santiago de Cuba?
  • ... that after his release from a hospital for the criminally insane, Richard Dixon burgled $16 from a credit union and hijacked a jet to Cuba?
  • ... that before his Major League Baseball career, Leo Posada represented Cuba internationally in cycling?
  • ... that Brooklyn Nine-Nine actress Melissa Fumero is the daughter of Cubans who fled to the U.S. as teenagers?

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Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

The Cuban communist revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro took part in the Cuban Revolution from 1953 to 1959. Following on from his early life, Castro decided to fight for the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's military junta by founding a paramilitary organization, "The Movement". In July 1953, they launched a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks, during which many militants were killed and Castro was arrested. Placed on trial, he defended his actions and provided his famous "History Will Absolve Me" speech, before being sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment in the Model Prison on the Isla de Pinos. Renaming his group the "26th of July Movement" (MR-26-7), Castro was pardoned by Batista's government in May 1955, claiming they no longer considered him a political threat while offering to give him a place in the government, but he refused. Restructuring the MR-26-7, he fled to Mexico with his brother Raul Castro, where he met with Argentine Marxist-Leninist Che Guevara, and together they put together a small revolutionary force intent on overthrowing Batista.

In November 1956, Castro and 81 revolutionaries sailed from Mexico aboard the Granma, crash-landing near to Los Cayuelos. Attacked by Batista's forces, they fled to the Sierra Maestra mountain range, where the 19 survivors set up an encampment from which they waged guerrilla war against the army. Boosted by new recruits that increased the guerilla army's numbers to 200, they co-ordinated their attacks with the actions of other revolutionaries across Cuba, and Castro became an international celebrity after being interviewed by The New York Times. In 1958, Batista launched a counter-offensive, Operation Verano, but his army's use of conventional warfare was overwhelmed by Castro's guerrilla tactics, and the MR-26-7 eventually pushed out of the Sierra Maestra and took control of most of Oriente and Las Villas. Recognising that he was losing the war, Batista fled to the Dominican Republic while military leader Eulogio Cantillo took control of the country. With revolutionary forces controlling most of Cuba, Castro ordered Cantillo's arrest, before establishing a new government with Manuel Urrutia Lleó as governor and José Miró Cardona as prime minister, ensuring that they enacted laws to erode the power of the Batistanos. (Full article...)

Selected biography - show another

Alarcón in 2008

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada (21 May 1937 – 30 April 2022) was a Cuban politician. He served as his country's Permanent Representative to the United Nations (UN) for nearly 30 years and later served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1992 to 1993. Subsequently, Alarcón was President of the National Assembly of People's Power from 1993 to 2013, and because of this post, was considered the third-most powerful figure in Cuba. He was also until 2013 a Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.

A graduate of the University of Havana with a doctorate in philosophy, he served in various diplomatic posts following the Cuban Revolution. His first foreign-policy post was Head of the Americas Division in Cuba's Foreign Ministry. During his tenure as Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Alarcón held several prominent offices, such as President of the Security Council and Vice-President of the General Assembly. (Full article...)
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Bridge of Bacunayagua, Cuba marking the boundary between the Havana Province and Matanzas Province
Bridge of Bacunayagua, Cuba marking the boundary between the Havana Province and Matanzas Province
Credit: Qyd
Bridge of Bacunayagua marking the boundary between the Havana Province and Matanzas Province

More did you know - show different entries

  • ...that there was, on average, one aircraft hijacking incident every eleven days in 1969 involving flights from United States being forcibly redirected to Cuba?
  • ...that Gaia is an arts centre in Havana, set up as a not-for-profit collaboration between Cuban and international artists?
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Quote of the day

Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante.

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