The island of Cuba was inhabited by various Amerindian cultures prior to the arrival of the explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492. After his arrival, Spain conquered Cuba and appointed Spanish governors to rule in Havana. The administrators in Cuba were subject to the Viceroy of New Spain and the local authorities in Hispaniola. In 1762–63, Havana was briefly occupied by Britain, before being returned to Spain in exchange for Florida. A series of rebellions between 1868 and 1898, led by General Máximo Gómez, failed to end Spanish rule and claimed the lives of 49,000 Cuban guerrillas and 126,000 Spanish soldiers. However, the Spanish–American War resulted in a Spanish withdrawal from the island in 1898, and following three-and-a-half years of subsequent US military rule, Cuba gained formal independence in 1902.
Cuba's foreign policy has been fluid throughout history depending on world events and other variables, including relations with the United States. Without massive Soviet subsidies and its primary trading partner, Cuba became increasingly isolated in the late 1980s and early 1990s after the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, but Cuba opened up more with the rest of the world again starting in the late 1990s when they have since entered bilateral co-operation with several South American countries, most notably Venezuela and Bolivia beginning in the late 1990s, especially after the Venezuela election of Hugo Chávez in 1999, who became a staunch ally of Castro's Cuba. The United States used to stick to a policy of isolating Cuba until December 2014, when Barack Obama announced a new policy of diplomatic and economic engagement. The European Union accuses Cuba of "continuing flagrant violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms". Cuba has developed a growing relationship with the People's Republic of China and Russia. Cuba provided civilian assistance workers – principally medical – to more than 20 countries. More than one million exiles have escaped to foreign countries. Cuba's present foreign minister is Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was a Cuban revolutionary and politician who was the leader of Cuba from 1959 to 2008, serving as the prime minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976 and president from 1976 to 2008. Ideologically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1965 until 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state; industry and business were nationalized, and socialist reforms were implemented throughout society.
Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as a military dictator from 1952 to 1958, until he was overthrown in the Cuban Revolution.
Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz is a Cuban retired politician and general who served as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, the most senior position in the one-party communist state, from 2011 to 2021, and President of Cuba between 2008 and 2018, succeeding his brother Fidel Castro.
Julio Antonio Mella McPartland was a Cuban political activist, journalist, communist revolutionary, and one of the founders of the original Communist Party of Cuba. Mella studied law at the University of Havana but was expelled in 1925. He had worked against the government of Gerardo Machado, which had grown increasingly repressive. Mella left the country, reaching Central America. He traveled north to Mexico City, where he worked with other exiled dissidents and communist sympathizers against the Machado government. He was assassinated in 1929, but historians still disagree on which parties were responsible for his death. The 21st century Cuban government regards Mella as a communist hero and martyr.
Rock and roll music was introduced in Cuba in the late 1950s, with many Cuban artists of the time covering American songs translated into Spanish, as was occurring in Mexico at the same time. "The Batista police never looked kindly on Rock and Roll, and much less after the screening of films like Rebel Without a Cause and The Bad Seed, among others. After 1959, Rock and Roll followed the same path, although artists like Argentinean Luis Aguile emerged."
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada 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.
Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina, formerly Escuela Latinoamericana de Ciencias Médicas, is an international public medical school operated by the Cuban government established in 1999 and supported by the Venezuelan Government (RBDEV). Its mission is to "contribute to the training of Primary Health Care physicians in diverse regions of the World" according to Almaty objectives.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in Cuba have significantly varied throughout modern history. Cuba is now considered generally progressive, with vast improvements in the 21st century for such rights. Following the 2022 Cuban Family Code referendum, there is legal recognition of the right to marriage, unions between people of the same sex, same-sex adoption and non-commercial surrogacy as part of one of the most progressive Family Codes in Latin America. Until the 1990s, the LGBT community was marginalized on the basis of heteronormativity, traditional gender roles, politics and strict criteria for moralism. It was not until the 21st century that the attitudes and acceptance towards LGBT people changed to be more tolerant.
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, and north of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. Havana is the largest city and capital; other major cities include Santiago de Cuba and Camagüey. The official area of the Republic of Cuba is 109,884 km2 (42,426 sq mi) but a total of 350,730 km2 (135,420 sq mi) including the exclusive economic zone. Cuba is the second-most populous country in the Caribbean after Haiti, with over 11 million inhabitants.
After the establishment of diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union after the Cuban Revolution of 1959, Cuba became increasingly dependent on Soviet markets and military aid and was an ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 1972 Cuba joined the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), an economic organization of states designed to create co-operation among the communist planned economies, which was dominated by its largest economy, the Soviet Union. Moscow kept in regular contact with Havana and shared varying close relations until the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. Cuba then entered an era of serious economic hardship, the Special Period.
Fabio Grobart was a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary and politician who played an important role in the 1959 Cuban Revolution that overthrew Fulgencio Batista and led to Fidel Castro's rise to power.
Bruno Eduardo Rodríguez Parrilla is a Cuban diplomat and politician. He is a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba, and has served as Cuba's Minister of Foreign Affairs since 2009.
Havana Jam was a three-day music festival that took place at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana, Cuba, from March 2 to March 4, 1979. The event was sponsored by Bruce Lundvall, the president of Columbia Records, Jerry Masucci, the president of Fania Records, and the Cuban Ministry of Culture.
Sandy (Alexandra) Pollack (1948–1985) was an American Communist activist. She is best known for her involvement in the founding of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), which was the focus of two highly controversial FBI investigations. One addressed possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), in which her personal contact with Farid Handal, brother of Salvadoran Communist leader Shafik, was called into question. The other concerned alleged tangible support of terrorist activities perpetrated by or on behalf of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, FMLN and Frente Democrático Revolucionario FDR under the guise of international solidarity. The first case was dropped for lack of evidence. She was killed in a plane crash before the second case was settled.
Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel y Bermúdez Larjiq Zada is a Cuban politician and engineer who is the 3rd and current First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba. As First Secretary, he is the most powerful person in the Cuban government. Díaz-Canel succeeds the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro, making him the first non-Castro leader of Cuba since the revolution.
The Communist Party of Cuba is the sole ruling party of Cuba. It was founded on 3 October 1965 as the successor to the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution, which was in turn made up of the 26th of July Movement and Popular Socialist Party that seized power in Cuba after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. The party governs Cuba as an authoritarian one-party state where dissidence and political opposition are prohibited and repressed. The Cuban constitution ascribes the role of the party to be the "leading force of society and of the state".
The consolidation of the Cuban Revolution is a period in Cuban history typically defined as starting in the aftermath of the revolution in 1959 and ending in the first congress of the Communist Party of Cuba 1975, which signified the final political solidification of the Cuban revolutionaries' new government. The period encompasses early domestic reforms, human rights violations continuing under the new regime, growing international tensions, and politically climaxed with the failure of the 1970 sugar harvest.
The 10th World Festival of Youth and Students (WFYS) was held from 28 July to 5 August 1973 in East Berlin, the capital of East Germany. The festival, organised by the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) was previously hosted in East Berlin in 1951. Around 8 million visitors and 25,600 guests from 140 countries attended, under the motto, "For Anti-Imperialist Solidarity, Peace and Friendship".
Cuba 
