Cuba is the largest island nation in the Caribbean, lying just south of Florida at the gateway between North and South America. A land of tobacco fields, sugar plantations, and colourful colonial cities, it has a vibrant culture of music and dance that has influenced the world. Since its 1959 revolution, Cuba has followed a singular path as a communist state, a small country that has loomed large in global affairs out of all proportion to its size.
Cuba was home to the indigenous Taino before Christopher Columbus reached it in 1492 and Spain colonised the island, building an economy on sugar and the labour of enslaved Africans. After long struggles for independence, in which figures such as Carlos Manuel de Cespedes and the writer Jose Marti are revered, Spanish rule ended in 1898 amid the Spanish-American War, leaving the island under heavy United States influence. In 1959 a revolution led by Fidel Castro overthrew the government and set Cuba on a communist course.
Cuba is a long, narrow island, the largest in the Caribbean, made up of one main island and many smaller keys. Much of the land is gentle and fertile, ideal for the sugar and tobacco that shaped its economy, with low mountain ranges, notably the Sierra Maestra in the southeast. Surrounded by warm Caribbean waters and fringed with beaches, coral reefs, and mangroves, the island enjoys a tropical climate, though it lies in the path of Atlantic hurricanes.
The flag of Cuba has five horizontal stripes of blue and white, with a red triangle at the hoist bearing a single white five-pointed star. The three blue stripes are said to represent the three regions into which the island was once divided, the white the purity of the patriots' cause, the red triangle the blood shed and the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and the lone star the independent nation, giving the flag its nickname, the Lone Star flag.
Cuba was historically a Roman Catholic country, though religious practice was discouraged for decades after the revolution, when the state was officially atheist before later easing its stance. A distinctive feature of Cuban spirituality is Santeria, an Afro-Cuban religion that blends the West African beliefs of enslaved peoples with Catholic saints, widely practised across the island. Today Cubans follow a mix of Catholicism, these Afro-Cuban traditions, growing Protestant churches, and secular outlooks.
Cuban cuisine blends Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences into hearty, flavourful food. A classic dish is ropa vieja, shredded beef stewed with peppers and tomatoes, and rice and beans appear at almost every meal, the black beans and rice combination affectionately named moros y cristianos. Roast pork, fried plantains, and cassava are staples, and the island is world-famous for two of its agricultural products: its cigars and its rum.
Agriculture in Cuba has long centred on sugar, which dominated the economy for centuries and was farmed on great plantations, though its importance has declined. The island is renowned above all for tobacco, the basis of its celebrated hand-rolled cigars, grown in the western valleys. Coffee, citrus, and tropical fruits are also produced. Much farmland is state-run or cooperative, and the country has at times struggled to feed itself, importing a large share of its food.
The independence struggles against Spain and the United States-influenced era that followed shaped modern Cuba, but the defining event was the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro and his comrades, including Che Guevara, to power. Cuba became a communist state allied with the Soviet Union, a stance that led to the 1962 missile crisis, when the island was at the centre of a nuclear standoff between superpowers, and to a long United States economic embargo that endures to this day.
Cuba has a population of around 11 million people, of mixed European and African descent reflecting its colonial and plantation history. The country is noted for high levels of literacy and a health system that has long been a point of national pride, even amid economic hardship. Most Cubans live in cities, above all the historic capital, Havana, with its faded Spanish colonial grandeur. Economic difficulties have driven waves of emigration, many to the United States.
