Quân đội Cuba

[Rode Strawther]

Cubac] officially the Republic of Cuba,[d] 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 Yucatn Peninsula (Mexico), south of both 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. It is the largest country in the Caribbean by area.

Cuba is a socialist state, in which the role of the Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Cuba has an authoritarian government where political opposition is not permitted.[20][21] Censorship is extensive and independent journalism is repressed;[22][23][24] Reporters Without Borders has characterized Cuba as one of the worst countries for press freedom.[25][24] Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America.[26] It is a multiethnic country whose people, culture and customs derive from diverse origins, including the Tano 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.

Historians believe the name Cuba comes from the Tano language; however, "its exact derivation [is] unknown".[35] The exact meaning of the name is unclear, but it may be translated either as 'where fertile land is abundant' (cubao),[36] or 'great place' (coabana).

Humans first settled Cuba around 6,000 years ago, descending from migrations from northern South America or Central America.[37] The arrival of humans on Cuba is associated with extinctions of the islands native fauna, particularly its endemic sloths.[38] The Arawakan-speaking ancestors of the Taino people arrived in the Caribbean in a separate migration from South America around 1,700 years ago. Unlike the previous settlers of Cuba, the Taino extensively produced pottery and engaged in intensive agriculture.[37] The earliest evidence of the Taino people on Cuba dates to the 9th century AD.[39] Descendants of the first settlers of Cuba persisted on the western part of the island until Columbian contact, where they were recorded as the Guanahatabey people, who lived a hunter gatherer lifestyle.[40][37]

After first landing on an island then called Guanahani on 12 October 1492,[41] Christopher Columbus landed on Cuba on 27 October 1492, and landing in the northeastern coast on 28 October.[42] Columbus claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain[43] and named it Isla Juana after John, Prince of Asturias.[44]

In 1511, the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velzquez de Cullar at Baracoa. Other settlements soon followed, including San Cristobal de la Habana, founded in 1514 (southern coast of the island) and then in 1519 (current place), which later became the capital (1607). The indigenous Tano were forced to work under the encomienda system,[45] which resembled the feudal system in medieval Europe.[46] Within a century, the indigenous people were virtually wiped out due to multiple factors, primarily Eurasian infectious diseases, to which they had no natural resistance (immunity), aggravated by the harsh conditions of the repressive colonial subjugation.[47] In 1529, a measles outbreak killed two-thirds of those few natives who had previously survived smallpox.[48][49]

On 18 May 1539, conquistador Hernando de Soto departed from Havana with some 600 followers into a vast expedition through the American Southeast, in search of gold, treasure, fame and power.[50] On 1 September 1548, Gonzalo Perez de Angulo was appointed governor of Cuba. He arrived in Santiago, Cuba, on 4 November 1549, and immediately declared the liberty of all natives.[51] He became Cuba's first permanent governor to reside in Havana instead of Santiago, and he built Havana's first church made of masonry.[52][e]

By 1570, most residents of Cuba comprised a mixture of Spanish, African, and Tano heritages.[54] Cuba developed slowly and, unlike the plantation islands of the Caribbean, had a diversified agriculture. Most importantly, the colony developed as an urbanized society that primarily supported the Spanish colonial empire. By the mid-18th century, there were 50,000 slaves on the island, compared to 60,000 in Barbados and 300,000 in Virginia; as well as 450,000 in Saint-Domingue, all of which had large-scale sugarcane plantations.[55]

The Seven Years' War, which erupted in 1754 across three continents, eventually arrived in the Spanish Caribbean. Spain's alliance with the French pitched them into direct conflict with the British, and in 1762, a British expedition consisting of dozens of ships and thousands of troops set out from Portsmouth to capture Cuba. The British arrived on 6 June, and by August, had placed Havana under siege.[56] When Havana surrendered, the admiral of the British fleet, George Pocock and the commander of the land forces George Keppel, the 3rd Earl of Albemarle, entered the city, and took control of the western part of the island. The British immediately opened up trade with their North American and Caribbean colonies, causing a rapid transformation of Cuban society.[56]

The largest factor for the growth of Cuba's commerce in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was the Haitian Revolution. When the enslaved peoples of what had been the Caribbean's richest colony freed themselves through violent revolt, Cuban planters perceived the region's changing circumstances with both a sense of fear and opportunity. They were afraid because of the prospect that slaves might revolt in Cuba as well, and numerous prohibitions during the 1790s of the sale of slaves in Cuba who had previously been enslaved in French colonies underscored this anxiety. The planters saw opportunity, however, because they thought that they could exploit the situation by transforming Cuba into the slave society and sugar-producing "pearl of the Antilles" that Haiti had been before the revolution.[57] As the historian Ada Ferrer has written, "At a basic level, liberation in Saint-Domingue helped entrench its denial in Cuba. As slavery and colonialism collapsed in the French colony, the Spanish island underwent transformations that were almost the mirror image of Haiti's."[58] Estimates suggest that between 1790 and 1820 some 325,000 Africans were imported to Cuba as slaves, which was four times the amount that had arrived between 1760 and 1790.[59]

Although a smaller proportion of the population of Cuba was enslaved, at times, slaves arose in revolt. In 1812, the Aponte Slave Rebellion took place, but it was ultimately suppressed.[60] The population of Cuba in 1817 was 630,980 (of which 291,021 were white, 115,691 were free people of color (mixed-race), and 224,268 black slaves).[61][g]

In part due to Cuban slaves working primarily in urbanized settings, by the 19th century, the practice of coartacion had developed (or "buying oneself out of slavery", a "uniquely Cuban development"), according to historian Herbert S. Klein.[63] Due to a shortage of white labor, blacks dominated urban industries "to such an extent that when whites in large numbers came to Cuba in the middle of the nineteenth century, they were unable to displace Negro workers."[55] A system of diversified agriculture, with small farms and fewer slaves, served to supply the cities with produce and other goods.[55]

In the 1820s, when the rest of Spain's empire in Latin America rebelled and formed independent states, Cuba remained loyal to Spain. Its economy was based on serving the empire. By 1860, Cuba had 213,167 free people of color (39% of its non-white population of 550,000).[55][h]

Full independence from Spain was the goal of a rebellion in 1868 led by planter Carlos Manuel de Cspedes. De Cspedes, a sugar planter, freed his slaves to fight with him for an independent Cuba. On 27 December 1868, he issued a decree condemning slavery in theory but accepting it in practice and declaring free any slaves whose masters present them for military service.[64] The 1868 rebellion resulted in a prolonged conflict known as the Ten Years' War. A great number of the rebels were volunteers from the Dominican Republic,[j] and other countries, as well as numerous Chinese indentured servants.[66][k][l]

Around 200,000 Spanish troops outnumbered the much smaller rebel army, which relied mostly on guerrilla and sabotage tactics. The Spaniards began a campaign of suppression. General Valeriano Weyler, the military governor of Cuba, herded the rural population into what he called reconcentrados, described by international observers as "fortified towns". These are often considered the prototype for 20th-century concentration camps.[76] Between 200,000[77] and 400,000 Cuban civilians died from starvation and disease in the Spanish concentration camps, numbers verified by the Red Cross and United States Senator Redfield Proctor, a former Secretary of War. American and European protests against Spanish conduct on the island followed.[78]

The U.S. battleship USS Maine was sent to protect American interests, but soon after arrival, it exploded in Havana harbor and sank quickly, killing nearly three-quarters of the crew. The cause and responsibility for the sinking of the ship remained unclear after a board of inquiry. Popular opinion in the U.S., fueled by active yellow press, concluded that the Spanish were to blame and demanded action.[79] Spain and the United States declared war on each other in late April 1898.[n][o]

Following disputed elections in 1906, the first president, Toms Estrada Palma, faced an armed revolt by independence war veterans who defeated the meager government forces.[86] The U.S. intervened by occupying Cuba and named Charles Edward Magoon as Governor for three years. Cuban historians have characterized Magoon's governorship as having introduced political and social corruption.[87] In 1908, self-government was restored when Jos Miguel Gmez was elected president, but the U.S. continued intervening in Cuban affairs. In 1912, the Partido Independiente de Color attempted to establish a separate black republic in Oriente Province,[88] but was suppressed by General Monteagudo with considerable bloodshed.

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