Cuba

The Republic of Cuba consists of the island of Cuba (the largest of the Greater Antilles), the Isle of Youth and various adjacent small islands. The name of the island is derived from the Taino word "cubanacán", meaning a central place. It is located in the northern Caribbean at the confluence of the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. To the north is found the United States, to the northeast the Bahamas, to the east the Turks and Caicos Islands, to the west Mexico, to the south the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, and to the southeast Haiti.

Republic

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The following text has been added from the article Republic of Cuba so as to merge that article with this one. Integrating the text of that article with this one is an editting task that needs to be accomplished quickly, as the result of simply adding the text has been to both make this article overly long and to cause some information to be presented twice in this article.

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Economic policies and living standards

UNESCO statistics show Cuba's basic literacy rate to be among the highest in Latin America. Cuban life expectancy as of 2002 is only slightly lower than that of the United States, and, according to the CIA World Factbook, it is the highest life expectancy in Latin America. Cuba's infant mortality is as low as 5.8, lower than that of the United States, ranking as high as 7.0. Cuba has the second lowest infant mortality in the Americas, with only Canada at a lower rate. http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/enero/lun3/02MORTAL.html Also missing from the conventional analysis of Cuba's infant mortality rates is its very high abortion rate of 77.7 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44 in 1996 -- which, because of selective termination of "high-risk" pregnancies, yields lower numbers for infant mortality. Cuba's abortion rate was the 3rd highest out of the 60 countries studied. http://www.state.gov/p/wha/ci/14776.htm

Related Topics:
UNESCO - Life expectancy

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Life expectancy figures have improved from less than 60 years at birth in 1959 to 76.13 years in 2004, clearly demonstrate significant quality of life improvements. However, many other developing nations have had similar gains. http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=2429 On April 12, 1988, Castro became the only head of government to receive the Health for All medal from the World Health Organization.

Related Topics:
2004 - April 12 - 1988 - World Health Organization

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The Cuban media often portray a contrast between contented Cuban children and children dealing in drugs, dragged into prostitution, or living in the shantytowns of Bogotá, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, the pueblos jóvenes of Peru, or the favelas of Brazil.

Related Topics:
Shantytowns - Bogotá - Los Angeles - Buenos Aires - Pueblos jóvenes - Favela

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More than 100 million USD are being invested in the pharmaceutical industry this year alone, and it is generally acknowledged that Cuba has made substantial progress in developing pharmaceuticals. http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0507/S00453.htm Cuba has its own portfolio of related patents and tries to market its medicine around the world.

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Despite this, Cuba is severely lacking in medical supplies. Few medications are readily available, and for many, the only way to get medicine is to have relatives abroad send it to them. About 20,000 doctors were dispatched by Cuba around the world to provide medical aid to more than 60 Third World countries, despite lacking medical supplies.

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Many economic and social indicators have declined since the 1959 revolution. Pre-Castro Cuba ranked third in Latin America in per capita food consumption but ranked last out of the 11 countries analyzed in terms of percent of increase since 1957. Overall, Cuban per capita food consumption from 1954-1997 has decreased by 11.47 percent. Per capita consumption of cereals, tubers, and meat are today all below 1950's levels. The number of automobiles in Cuba has fallen since the 1950's -- the only country in Latin America for which this is the case. The number of telephone lines in Cuba also has been virtually frozen at 1950's levels. Cuba once ranked first in Latin America and fifth in the world in television sets per capita. In 1996 it barely ranked ninth in Latin America and is well back in the ranks globally.

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Cuba's rate of development of electrical power since the 1950s also ranks behind every other country in Latin America including Haiti. Cuban rice production has finally seen a minor increase above the 1950s levels. By virtually any measure of macroeconomic stability, Cuba was progressing at a greater rate in 1958 than it is today. The Castro government shut down the media sector in the 1950's, when the relatively small country had 58 daily newspapers of differing political hues and ranked eighth in the world in number of radio stations. url

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Human rights

The Cuban government has frequently been accused of numerous human rights abuses, including torture, arbitrary imprisonment, unfair trials, and extra-judicial executions. Many argue that several thousand unjustified deaths have occurred under Castro's decades-long rule. Many Cubans have been labeled "counterrevolutionaries", "fascists", or "CIA operatives", and imprisoned in extremely poor conditions without trial; some have been summarily executed. Military Units to Aid Production (or UMAPs) were labor camps established in 1965, according to Castro, for "people who have committed crimes against revolutionary morals" in order to work counter-revolutionary influences out of certain segments of the population.

Related Topics:
Human rights abuse - Torture - Military Units to Aid Production

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Groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also criticize the censorship, the lack of press freedom in Cuba, the lack of civil rights, the outlawing of political opposition groups and unions, and the lack of free and democratic elections. The government recognizes only one labor union, the Worker’s Central of Cuba (Central de Trabajadores de Cuba, CTC). Independent labor unions are denied formal status and their members are harassed. No local human rights groups enjoy legal status. Cuba remains one of the few countries in the world, and the only one in the Western Hemisphere, to deny the International Committee of the Red Cross access to its prisons. http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/01/13/cuba9848.htm

Related Topics:
Amnesty International - Human Rights Watch

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Supporters of the Cuban government argue that the human rights record and health care in Cuba is better than what existed under his predecessor, Fulgencio Batista. Critics point out that many measures of living standards has decreased since the revolution, that health care has improved in many other Latin American countries, and the Cuba is the only Latin American country to have not democratized in a post-Cold War environment. Justifying the Cuban government's policies, Castro claims they are an appropriate response to alleged U.S. covert activities in Cuba involving spies and mercenaries, and that most if not all critical human rights activists are in fact American agents. (See more on this in "Relationship with the United States").

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Restriction on emigration

Since 1959, an estimated 1,079,000 Cubans have left the island and migrated to different countries, primarily the United States. (url. Any Cuban that sets foot on U.S. territory has the automatic right to U.S. residency. However, the US does not allow Cubans to travel through conventional means, and are forced to be subdued by the wet feet/dry feet policy, creating a man-made stir and controversy around Cuba. Many Cuban exiles formed a vocal anti-Castro community in Miami, Florida.

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Although the vast majority of Cubans who fled during the Mariel Boat Lift were legitimate asylum seekers, Castro used the event to expel estimated 20,000 convicts, homosexuals and mentally disabled Cubans. http://www.uscg.mil/reserve/magazine/mag2000/apr2000/mariel.htm

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Cuba and the U.S. signed an immigration accord in 1994 under which the U.S. will grant 20,000 visas a year to Cubans wishing to emigrate to the U.S. However, U.S. immigration policy grants legal status to any Cuban who arrives on U.S. soil without a visa.

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Censorship

Some groups claim that the Cuban government restricts the books that are available in the country. They claim books considered counter-revolutionary (such as Animal Farm) are neither sold nor available in public libraries. Castro claims that "In Cuba there are no prohibited books, only those we do not have money to buy." The U.S. embargo makes the purchase of many books prohibitively expensive as well as restricting Cuban purchase of paper from the U.S. to print books at Cuban printing presses. There exists a persecuted pro-American underground libraries http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45050. The Cuban government alleges it was organized and financed by the head of the U.S. Interests office in Cuba, James Cason. In 2003, Cuban undercover intelligence agents discovered the movement and several participants were prosecuted and imprisoned. The story of related events are detailed in Los Disidentes (http://www.ain.cubasi.cu/libro), a book sponsored by the Cuban government. The Castro government has leveled such charges before; in a 1988 interview with Maria Shriver, Castro denied the existence of any human rights organizations in Cuba, saying that "liars and cheats" of the dissident group CCPDH were "...counterrevolutionaries being manipulated by the American Interests Section." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/castro/timeline/timeline2.html

Related Topics:
Animal Farm - Maria Shriver

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Foreign policy

See main article: Foreign relations of Cuba

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Castro became Prime Minister in February 1960, but friction with the US soon developed when the new government began expropriating property owned by major U.S. corporations (United Fruit in particular), proposing compensation based on property tax valuations that for many years the same companies had managed to keep artificially low. Castro visited the White House and met with Vice President Richard Nixon. Supposedly, Dwight D. Eisenhower snubbed Castro, giving the excuse that he was playing golf, and he left Nixon to speak to him and discern whether he was a Communist. Castro's economic policies had caused some concerns in Washington that Castro was a Communist with an allegiance to the Soviet Union. Following the meeting, Nixon remarked that Castro was "naïve" but not necessarily a Communist.

Related Topics:
Prime Minister - 1960 - United Fruit - White House - Vice President - Richard Nixon - Dwight D. Eisenhower - Washington - Soviet Union

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In February 1960, Cuba signed an agreement to buy oil from the U.S.S.R. When the U.S.-owned refineries in Cuba refused to process the oil they were expropriated, and the United States broke off diplomatic relations with the Castro government soon after. To the concern of the Eisenhower administration, Cuba continued to establish closer ties with the Soviet Union, and Castro began to step up speeches in Havana that included fiery condemnations of alleged American exploitation of the country. A variety of pacts were signed between Castro and Soviet Premier Khrushchev, and Cuba began to receive large amounts of economic and military aid from the Soviet Union.

Related Topics:
February - 1960 - Expropriated - Eisenhower - Soviet Premier - Khrushchev

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On April 17, 1961, two days after bombardments by B-26s bearing false Cuban markings, and the day after Castro had described his revolution as a socialist one, the United States sponsored an unsuccessful attack on Cuba. Expecting an imminent attack following the B-26 bombings, Castro took the opportunity to jail at least 20,000 Cubans identified as opponents to the regime. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/castro/filmmore/pt.html Brigade 2506, a force of about 1,400 Cuban exiles, financed and trained by the CIA, and commanded by CIA operatives Grayston Lynch and William Robertson, landed south of Havana at Playa Girón on the Bay of Pigs. The CIA's assumption was that the invasion would spark a popular uprising against Castro. There was, however, no such uprising. What part of the invasion force made it ashore was captured, while President Kennedy withdrew air support at the last minute. Two U.S. supplied support ships, the Houston and the Río Escondido, were sunk by Cuban propeller driven aircraft. Nine were executed in connection with this action.

Related Topics:
April 17 - 1961 - B-26s - Socialist - CIA - Grayston Lynch - William Robertson - Playa Girón - Bay of Pigs - Kennedy

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Later that year, in a nationally broadcast speech on December 2, Castro declared that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba was going to adopt Communism.

Related Topics:
December 2 - Marxist-Leninist - Communism

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During the 1960s, several smaller-scale attempts to overthrow Castro were made. Cuban exiles, financed and equipped by the CIA, attempted to emulate Castro's rise to power, forming small groups operating mainly in the Sierra de Escambray, a remote region near Trinidad, Cuba, hoping for an uprising that would remove Fidel Castro.

Related Topics:
Sierra de Escambray - Trinidad, Cuba

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Cuban Missile Crisis and relations with the Soviet Union

Main article: Cuban Missile Crisis

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According to Khrushchev's memoirs, the Soviet premier conceived the idea of placing missiles in Cuba as a deterrent to U.S. aggression against the island (or against the Soviet Union directly) while he was vacationing in the Crimea in the spring of 1962. After consultations with his own military he met with a Cuban delegation led by Raúl Castro in July in order to work out the specifics. It was agreed to deploy Soviet R-12 MRBM on Cuban soil; however, American U-2 reconnaissance discovered the construction of the missile installations on October 15, 1962 before the weapons had actually been deployed. The U.S. government viewed the installation of Soviet nuclear weapons 90 miles south of Miami as an aggressive act and a threat to U.S. security. The crisis resulted in the United States publicly announcing its discovery on October 22, 1962 and implemented a quarantine around Cuba that would actively intercept and search any vessels heading for the island.

Related Topics:
Crimea - R-12 - MRBM - U-2 - October 15 - 1962 - Miami - October 22

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In a personal letter to Khrushchev written on October 27 1962 (url), Castro urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear first strike against the United States if Cuba were invaded, but Khrushchev rejected any first strike response (pdf). Soviet field commanders in Cuba were, however, authorized to use tactical nuclear weapons if attacked by the United States.

Related Topics:
October 27 - 1962 - Tactical nuclear weapons

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Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a U.S. commitment not to invade Cuba and a commitment to remove American missiles from Turkey. Although tensions were defused, relations between the United States and Cuba remained mutually hostile, and the CIA continued to sponsor a number of assassination attempts over the following years.

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In response to U.S. hostility and the establishment of close ties to the Soviet Union, Cuba became increasingly dependent on Soviet markets and military and economic aid. Cuba was able to build a formidable military force with the help of Soviet equipment and military advisors. The KGB kept in close touch with Havana, and Castro tightened Communist Party control over all levels of government, the media, and the educational system, while developing a Soviet-style internal police force.

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However, Castro's relationship with the Soviet Union did face some problems. After a trial in Cuba of thirty-five members of a pro-Moscow "microfaction" charged with activities including "clandestine propaganda against the Party line", Petrovich Shlyapnikov, the chief KGB advisor to the General Intelligence Directorate, was sent back to Moscow as part of the alleged conspiracy with the "microfaction". This coupled with what Moscow saw as wasteful use of Soviet aid, and a perception of an increasingly haughty and indignant demeanor, led to Soviet threats of cutting off aid to Cuba. As soon as he returned from Havana, Shlyapnikov immediately lobbied for a reduction in oil exports to Cuba. Shipments were cut by 40%, which slowed Cuban industrial output drastically.

Related Topics:
Petrovich Shlyapnikov - General Intelligence Directorate

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Nevertheless the alliance with the Soviet Union remained strong in the face of the common Cold War foe, the United States. This caused a split between Castro and his fellow revolutionary Che Guevara, who took a more pro-Chinese view following ideological conflict between the CPSU and the Maoist CPC. In 1967, Che left for Bolivia in an ill-fated attempt to stir up revolution against the country's military dictatorship; Castro did not provide him with any material support. One theory suggested for Castro's refusal was the fact that Moscow did not approve of revolution in Latin America unless it involved groups who towed the line with Moscow.

Related Topics:
Che Guevara - Chinese - CPSU - Maoist - CPC - Bolivia - Military dictatorship

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On August 23, 1968, Castro took to the airwaves and publicly denounced the Czech rebellion and warned the Cuban people against Czechoslovakian "counter-revolutionaries" who "were moving Czechoslovakia towards capitalism and into the arms of imperialists". He called the leaders of the rebellion "the agents of West Germany and fascist reactionary rabble". In return for his public backing of the invasion, at a time when many Soviet allies considered the invasion an infringement of Czechoslovakia's sovereignty, the Soviets bailed out the Cuban economy with extra loans and an immediate increase in oil exports.

Related Topics:
August 23 - 1968 - Czech rebellion

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On November 4, 1975, Castro decided to send Cuban troops to Angola in support of the government against the South African-aided rebels. Moscow aided the Cuban initiative with the U.S.S.R. engaging in a massive airlift of Cuban forces into Angola.

Related Topics:
November 4 - 1975 - Angola - South Africa

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A critical part of Castro's external policy is the support, shelter and training of groups which seek the violent overthrow of the governments that oppose ideologies akin to his. This has involved covert Cuban interventions in almost all countries in Latin America, and has been as wide ranging as to involve over time such as: the North Vietnamese, the North African "Polisario Front," the violent Basque radicals in Spain, and apparently arms supply to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.

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Relationship with the United States

In Operation Mongoose during the early 1960s, the CIA is known to have participated in various forms of covert economic sabotage in an attempt to oust Castro, including attempting destruction of the country's vital sugar crop, setting up explosives at certain factories, and even the bombing of a cargo ship with numerous casualties. During the same time frame, the CIA is also known to have established a relationship with the mafia in assassination attempts on Castro; in contrast to the ousted General Batista, Castro's government cracked down severely on the mafia, depriving some notorious mobsters of millions of dollars. There is controversy over whether President John F. Kennedy was fully aware of the "dirty tricks" the CIA was employing in its attempts to overthrow Castro at the time, as the agency's accountability standards were not as strict as they are today. Operation Mongoose ended in the mid-1960s, and there is no evidence that the U.S. is presently engaged in covert action against Castro.

Related Topics:
Operation Mongoose - 1960s - Mafia - John F. Kennedy

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Citing previous U.S. hostility, supporters of Castro thus portray opposition to his regime as illegitimate, and the result of an ongoing conspiracy fostered solely by Cuban exiles with ties to the United States or the CIA. Many Castro supporters thus feel that Castro's often harsh measures are justified; Castro's opposition, though, maintains that he uses the United States as an excuse to justify continued political control. The United States government maintains the continuing U.S. foreign policy goal in regards to Cuba is to bring democracy to the nation. The Cuban-immigrant population of the U.S. state of Florida, which holds considerable political clout in U.S. electoral politics, has significant influence in U.S. relations with Cuba. Castro maintains a significant "intelligence" and agi-prop presence in the United States, and throughout the world. Some believe that this effort is partially funded through sale of information to those with interests opposed to those of the U.S.

Related Topics:
Democracy - Florida

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Castro remains a vocal critic of United States policies, speaking against the continuing economic embargo and U.S. attempts to topple his government. He has also condemned what he sees as exploitation of developing countries by U.S. corporations and even the state of public health care in the United States. Recently, he has harshly condemned the migration policies of the United States, which severely limit travel of Cuban-Americans to their families in Cuba. Castro also opposes the policies of developed world vis-à-vis the developing countries, including growing costs of servicing foreign debt.

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In 2000 four Cuban exiles with ties to the Cuban-American National Foundation http://havanajournal.com/hispanics_comments/3106_0_24_0_M68/l were convicted in a Panamanian court of plotting to assassinate Castro during a regional summit. The four were pardoned in 2004 and all but Luis Posada Carriles entered the United States. Posada appeared in the U.S. in May 2005, but was arrested and faces extradition to Venezuela. url All four men have been accused of being on the CIA payroll during the '70s or '80s. http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050520/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuban_militant_documents_2

Related Topics:
Cuban-American National Foundation - Luis Posada Carriles

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