The national flag of Cuba consists of five alternating stripes and a red equilateral triangle at the hoist, within which is a white five-pointed star. It was designed in 1849 and officially adopted May 20, 1902. The flag is referred to as the Estrella Solitaria, or the Lone Star flag. It is in the stars and stripes flag family.
The guaracha is a genre of music that originated in Cuba, of rapid tempo and comic or picaresque lyrics. The word has been used in this sense at least since the late 18th and early 19th century. Guarachas were played and sung in musical theatres and in working-class dance salons. They became an integral part of bufo comic theatre in the mid-19th century. During the later 19th and the early 20th century the guaracha was a favourite musical form in the brothels of Havana. The guaracha survives today in the repertoires of some trova musicians, conjuntos and Cuban-style big bands.
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.
Havana's International Book Fair is an annual public festival to promote Cuban government sanctioned books and writing that spans between February and March. The festival begins in Havana at the Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, an 18th-century Spanish construction, and spreads east and west of the capital to all provinces and many municipalities. The book fair ends in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba. The fair first took place in 1982, and occurred every two years until 2000 when it became an annual tradition. The festival consists of book vendors, poetry readings, children’s activities, art exhibitions, and concerts in the evenings. It is considered Cuba’s premier cultural event, as well as the event with the highest attendance in Havana. The 18th annual International Book Fair in 2009 had approximately 600,000 visitors.
Manuel Rodulfo Tardo was a Cuban artist.
Manuel Vidal Fernández is a Cuban artist. He engages in painting, drawing, engraving, and graphic design.
Samuel Feijóo Rodríguez was a Cuban writer and artist specializing in painting and illustration.
José Manuel Fors is a contemporary Cuban artist born in Havana in 1956. His work is principally based on installations and supported by photography. His first artistic forays, during the early eighties, were part of what has been coined "The Renaissance of Cuban Art". His artwork has been shown in renowned museums and galleries in the United States, Europe and Cuba.
The Cuban literacy campaign was an eight-month long effort to abolish illiteracy in Cuba after the Cuban Revolution.
Cuba–Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic relations refers to the current and historical relations between the Republic of Cuba and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). Cuba recognized the SADR on 20 January 1980, formal diplomatic relations were established on 30 January 1980. A Sahrawi embassy was opened in Havana in April 1980, and the Cuban embassy in Algiers was accredited to the SADR.
Adolfo Guzmán was a Cuban pianist, music director, arranger and composer. During his 40-year-long career he directed several important Cuban ensembles, including Orquesta Riverside and Los Modernistas, as well as prominent radio and cabaret orchestras.
Silvano Shueg Hechevarría, better known as Chori or Choricera, was a famous Cuban percussionist. He rose to prominence in the 1930s due to his extravagant shows at many nightclubs in Havana where he played timbales, drums, cowbells and objects such as bottles and metal pans. He composed the popular sones "La choricera" and "Ayaca de maíz", and appeared in several films in the 1950s.
Alfredo Diez Nieto was a Cuban composer, conductor, and professor. He taught composition at Instituto Musical Kohly, the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory, the National Art School, and the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. He founded and conducted the Orquesta Popular de Conciertos. Diez Nieto composed orchestral works including three symphonies and chamber music for various instruments, using and transforming elements from Cuban folk music.
Ernesto Daranas Serrano is a Cuban filmmaker. Daranas' three feature films have had unprecedented success in Cuba and were submitted to the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Daranas is a Latin Grammy nominee for Best Long Form Music Video and a recipient of the King of Spain Award. His filmography includes Sergio & Sergei (2017), starring Ron Perlman, and Behavior, often considered the greatest Cuban film of the 21st century.
Ana Andrea Cairo Ballester was a Cuban writer, researcher and professor of literature and philology.
Abdala, technical name CIGB-66, is a COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Cuba. This candidate, named after a patriotic drama by Cuban independence hero José Martí, is a protein subunit vaccine containing COVID-derived proteins that trigger an immune response. The full results of the clinical trial have not yet been published. This candidate followed a previous one called CIGB-669 (MAMBISA).
This article covers events in the year 2022 in Cuba.
The Elephant and the Bicycle is a 1994 Cuban surrealist comedy film directed by Juan Carlos Tabío, and written by Tabío and Eliseo Alberto. The film makes use of magical realism and metatextuality to create a parable of Cuban history from its first conquest through the Cuban Revolution, and pay homage to 100 years of cinema.
