Cuba

Spain colonised Cuba from 1511, wiping out most of the Indigenous Taíno through disease and forced labour and building a plantation economy on sugar and tobacco worked by enslaved Africans; by the nineteenth century Cuba was one of the world's great sugar producers and one of the last places in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1886.

Independence wars against Spain culminated in the 1898 intervention of the United States, which then occupied Cuba and, even after formal independence in 1902, retained the right to intervene and a naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Decades of US-backed governments, corruption, and the Batista dictatorship followed.

In 1959 Fidel Castro's rebel movement overthrew Batista. The new government nationalised US and Cuban businesses, aligned with the Soviet Union, and survived the Bay of Pigs invasion and the 1962 missile crisis. The United States imposed an embargo that still stands. Soviet subsidies ended in 1991, causing the severe "Special Period," and limited reforms have followed since. Raúl Castro succeeded Fidel, and Miguel Díaz-Canel, the first non-Castro leader, took over in 2018; large anti-government protests broke out in 2021.

Cuban culture is a fusion of Spanish and African roots, most powerfully in music and religion. Son, the rural style that fed into salsa, plus rumba, danzón, trova, and the timba and reggaetón of today, make music inescapable — in bars, doorways, and the street. Afro-Cuban religions, chiefly Santería (Regla de Ocha), blend Yoruba deities with Catholic saints and shape festivals, drumming, and daily ritual.

Decades of scarcity and state control have produced a culture of improvisation (resolver, "to sort it out") and dark humour, alongside genuine achievements in education, literacy, and healthcare that Cubans point to with pride. Family ties are close, and a very large diaspora, mostly in Florida and Spain, sends money and maintains a charged political relationship with the island.

Baseball, not football, is the national sport, played on any patch of open ground, and dominoes are a fixture of the street.

About two million people live in Havana, a city of Spanish colonial plazas, crumbling art-deco and 1950s apartment blocks, and 1950s American cars kept running by ingenuity. Santiago de Cuba in the east is the second city and the cradle of the revolution and of much Cuban music.

State salaries are very low, so most people rely on remittances, tips from tourism, small private enterprise, and informal trade. Rationing, queues, and frequent blackouts are part of the daily routine, and the years since the pandemic have brought some of the worst shortages and the largest emigration wave in the country's history.

Life is lived largely outdoors and in public — on the Malecón, on stoops and balconies, and around music — with a strong sense of neighbourhood and a deep weariness with the day-to-day struggle.

Cuban home cooking is simple and filling: rice and black beans (together as moros y cristianos or "congrí"), roast or fried pork, chicken, ropa vieja (shredded stewed beef), fried plantain (tostones and sweet maduros), and yuca con mojo, cassava with a garlic-citrus dressing. Vaca frita, picadillo, and tamal round out the repertoire.

Ingredients can be limited by the shortages, and much everyday eating is basic; the better private paladares in Havana and Viñales offer more variety, including lobster and fish where available. Bread, coffee, and sugar are staples of the ration.

Cuba's famous exports — rum and cigars — are central to its image: a mojito or daiquirí, both claimed as Havana inventions, and a hand-rolled cigar from Pinar del Río. Strong sweet espresso (cafecito) punctuates the day.

Havana is the reason most people come. Old Havana (Habana Vieja), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has restored colonial squares, the cathedral, the Malecón seawall, the Capitolio, and the fortresses guarding the harbour, alongside blocks still waiting for repair. The city is best absorbed slowly, on foot and by vintage taxi.

Trinidad, in the centre, is a near-perfectly preserved Spanish colonial town of cobbled streets and pastel houses, backed by the Valle de los Ingenios sugar estates and close to the Escambray mountains and Playa Ancón. Cienfuegos, on the south coast, has an elegant French-influenced centre.

West of Havana, the Viñales Valley is a landscape of tobacco fields and rounded limestone mogotes, another World Heritage Site, good for walking and horse riding. Farther afield lie the cays and diving of Jardines de la Reina and María la Gorda, the beaches of Cayo Coco and Varadero, and Santiago de Cuba with its Castillo del Morro, Moncada barracks, and Afro-Cuban music.