Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country in the Caribbean. It comprises the eponymous main island as well as 4,195 islands, islets, and cays. Situated at the convergence of the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean, Cuba is located east of the Yucatán Peninsula, south of both Florida and the Bahamas, west of Hispaniola, 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 Dominican Republic, with about 10 million inhabitants. It is the largest country in the Caribbean by area. Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America.
Cuba was inhabited as early as the 4th millennium BC, with the Guanahatabey and Taíno peoples present at the time of Spanish colonization in the 15th century. Cuba's population descends primarily from three groups: pre-Columbian indigenous peoples, chiefly the Taíno and Ciboney, Spanish settlers and immigrants (mainly from Andalusia, the Canary Islands, Galicia, and Asturias), and sub-Saharan Africans brought through the transatlantic slave trade. The territory remained part of the Spanish Empire until the Spanish–American War of 1898, after which it was occupied by the United States and gained independence in 1902. A 1933 coup toppled the democratically elected government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada and began a long period of military influence, particularly by Fulgencio Batista. In 1940, Cuba implemented a new constitution, but mounting political unrest culminated in the 1952 Cuban coup d'état by Batista. His autocratic government was overthrown in January 1959 by the 26th of July Movement during the Cuban Revolution. That revolution established communist rule under the leadership of Fidel Castro. The country under Castro was a point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into nuclear war.
During the 1970s through the late 1980s, Cuba intervened in numerous conflicts in support of anti-colonial and Marxist governments or movements across Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. According to a CIA declassified report, Cuba had received $33 billion in Soviet aid by 1984. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced a severe economic downturn in the 1990s, known as the Special Period. In 2008, Castro retired after 49 years; Raúl Castro was elected his successor. Raúl retired as president of the Council of State in 2018, and Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected president by the National Assembly following parliamentary elections. Raúl retired as First Secretary of the Communist Party in 2021, and Díaz-Canel was elected thereafter, becoming Cuba's first leader to have been born after the Cuban Revolution.
Cuba is a socialist state in which the role of the Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Cuba is currently the world's only communist country outside of Asia. Cuba has an authoritarian government wherein political opposition is prohibited. Censorship is extensive, and independent journalism is repressed; Reporters Without Borders has characterized Cuba as one of the worst countries for press freedom. Cuba is a founding member of the UN, G77, NAM, OACPS, ALBA, and OAS. Since 1959, Cuba has regarded the U.S. military presence in Guantánamo Bay as illegal.
Cuba has one of the world's few command economies, and its economy is dominated by tourism and the exports of skilled labor, sugar, tobacco, and coffee. Cuba has historically—before and during communist rule—performed better than other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in literacy. After the 1959 revolution, Cuba performed better than other Latin American countries in infant and maternal mortality, and life expectancy. According to a 2012 study, Cuba is the only country in the world to meet the conditions of sustainable development put forth by the WWF. Cuba has a universal health care system that provides free medical treatment to all Cuban citizens, although challenges include low salaries for doctors, poor facilities, poor provision of equipment, and the frequent absence of essential drugs.
A 2023 study by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights estimated that 88% of the population lives in extreme poverty. According to the World Food Programme of the United Nations, rationed food meets only a fraction of daily nutritional needs for many Cubans, leading to health issues. Ongoing since 1960, the United States embargo against Cuba stands as one of the longest-running trade and economic measures in bilateral relations in history.
Historians believe the name Cuba comes from the Taíno language; however, its derivation is unknown. Cuba may be translated either as 'where fertile land is abundant' (cubao), or 'great place' (coabana).
Another hypothesis on the name's origin is that the island was named after the town of Cuba, Portugal, supported by those who believe that Christopher Columbus was Portuguese.
Humans first settled Cuba around 6,000 years ago, descending from migrations from northern South America or Central America. The arrival of humans on Cuba is associated with extinctions of the island's native fauna, particularly its endemic sloths. The Arawakan-speaking ancestors of the Taíno people arrived in the Caribbean in a separate migration from South America around 1,700 years ago. Recent archaeogenetic evidence indicates that this expansion largely replaced the earlier pre-ceramic populations of the island with almost no genetic admixture between the groups. Unlike the previous settlers of Cuba, the Taíno extensively produced pottery and engaged in intensive agriculture. The earliest evidence of the Taíno people on Cuba dates to the 9th century. 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.
Spanish colonization and rule (1492–1898)
Christopher Columbus arrived in Cuba on October 27, 1492, and landed the following day. Columbus claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain and named it Isla Juana ("John's Island") after John, Prince of Asturias.
In 1511 the first Spanish settlement was founded by Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar at Baracoa. Other settlements 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 Taíno were forced to work under the encomienda system, which resembled the feudal system in medieval Europe. Within a century, the Taíno faced high incidence of mortality from multiple factors—primarily Eurasian infectious diseases to which they had no acquired immunity, aggravated by the harsh conditions of the repressive colonial subjugation. In 1529, a measles outbreak killed two-thirds of those few indigenous individuals who had previously survived smallpox.
On 18 May 1539, conquistador Hernando de Soto departed from Havana with some 600 followers on an extensive expedition through the Southeastern United States in search of gold, treasure, fame, and power. On 1 September 1548, Gonzalo Perez de Angulo was appointed governor of Cuba. He arrived in Santiago de Cuba on 4 November 1549 and declared the liberty of the indigenous population. He became Cuba's first permanent governor, residing in Havana, and he built the first church made of masonry in Cuba.
By 1570, most residents of Cuba had a mixture of Spanish, African, and Taíno heritages. 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. 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.