Cuba

Island country in the Caribbean Sea, the largest of the West Indies, off the south coast of Florida and to the east of Mexico.

Government
The 1976 constitution created a socialist state with the National Assembly of People's Power as its supreme organ. It consists of 589 deputies, since 1992 elected by universal suffrage for a five‐year term, and elects 31 of its members to form the Council of State. It also elects the head of state, who is president of the council, head of government, and first secretary and chair of the political bureau of the only authorized party, the Cuban Communist Party (PCC).

History
The first Europeans to visit Cuba were those of the expedition of Christopher Columbus in 1492, who found Arawak Indians there. From 1511 Cuba was a Spanish colony, its economy based on sugar plantations worked by slaves, who were first brought from Africa in 1523 to replace the decimated Indian population. Slavery was not abolished until 1886. Cuba was ceded to the USA in 1898, at the end of the Spanish‐American War. Under US administration, roads, communications, and health services were improved. A new judicial system was set up on the US model. However, early enthusiasm after independence from Spain soon faded. A republic was proclaimed in 1901, but the USA retained its naval base and asserted a right to intervene in internal affairs until 1934.

Batista dictatorship
In 1933 an army sergeant, Fulgencio Batista, seized and held power until he retired in 1944. In 1952 he regained power in a bloodless coup and began another period of rule that many Cubans found oppressive. In 1953 a young lawyer and son of a sugar planter, Dr Fidel Castro Ruz, tried to overthrow him but failed. He went into exile to prepare for another coup in 1956 but was again defeated. He fled to the hills with Dr Ernesto ‘Che’Guevara and ten others to form a guerrilla force.

Revolution
In 1959 Castro's force of 5,000 guerrillas deposed Batista, to great popular acclaim. The 1940 constitution was suspended and replaced by a ‘Fundamental Law’, power being vested in a council of ministers with Castro as prime minister, his brother Raúl as his deputy, and Che Guevara, reputedly, as the next in command. In 1960 the USA broke off diplomatic relations after all US businesses in Cuba were nationalized without compensation. In 1961 it went further, sponsoring a full‐scale (but abortive) invasion, the Bay of Pigs episode. In December of that year Castro proclaimed a communist state whose economy would develop along Marxist‐Leninist lines.

Cuban missile crisis
In 1962 Cuba was expelled from the Organization of American States (OAS), which initiated a full political and economic blockade. A US trade embargo was also imposed. Castro responded by tightening relations with the USSR which, in the same year, supplied missiles with atomic warheads for installation in Cuba. The Cuban missile crisis brought the USA and the USSR to the brink of nuclear war, but conflict was averted when the USSR agreed to dismantle the missiles at the US president's insistence.

With Soviet help, Cuba made substantial economic and social progress 1965–72. In 1976 a referendum approved a socialist constitution, and Fidel Castro and his brother were elected president and vice‐president.

Foreign policy
During the following five years Cuba played a larger role in world affairs, particularly in Africa, to the disquiet of the USA. Re‐elected in 1981, Castro offered to discuss foreign policy with the USA but Cuban support for Argentina, against Britain, and for leftist rebels seeking to overthrow the repressive US‐backed government of El Salvador caused continuing strains with the USA.

Communism reaffirmed
Castro reaffirmed his communist orthodoxy in the light of events in eastern Europe 1989–90. The advent of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the USSR's abandonment of its policy of supporting revolutions in the developing world led to a curtailment of Cuba's foreign military interventions in 1989, and in September 1991 the USSR announced the withdrawal of all Soviet troops.

Economic reforms
Further market‐orientated reforms were introduced in November 1994 by the Cuban government but the USA remained intransigent and, despite UN condemnation, refused to lift its embargo. In September 1995 the government passed legislation permitting foreign ownership in nearly all parts of the economy.

In February 1998 Castro was confirmed as president for another five‐year term by the National Assembly. In April the UN Human Rights Commission declined to censure Cuba; a number of countries abstained.

Emigration problems
The economy deteriorated during 1993, after the USA tightened a 32‐year‐old trade embargo against Cuba, and in September Castro was forced to legalize private enterprise and to crack down on consequential black market activity. During the summer of 1994 refugees fled to Florida in increasing numbers and perilous circumstances, and in September the USA signed an accord with Cuba ending its policy of granting immediate residency to Cuban asylum‐seekers and committing itself instead to accepting a minimum of 20,000 legal Cuban immigrants each year; in return Cuba was to take steps to deter its citizens from fleeing the island by sea and to prevent unsafe departures.

In late 1999, however, relations between the USA and Cuba deteriorated to their lowest point for twenty years as a bitter political crisis escalated. Cuba demanded the return of illegal immigrants, centring around the repatriation of Elian Gonzalez, a six‐year‐old boy who survived the shipwreck that killed his mother as they attempted to migrate to Florida. The USA insisted on using their own justice system, whereas Cuba said this threatened the 1994 agreement aimed at discouraging emigration. Tension mounted as the USA deported a Cuban diplomat who refused to leave after being linked to an immigration official charged with spying.

The federal government ruled that Gonzalez had to be returned to his father in Cuba, but his relations in the USA called for residency for the boy. US vice‐president Gore also supported the claim, but in April 2000 armed federal agents took Elian from the home of his relatives in Miami and reunited him with his father. The raid on the house was authorized by the attorney general and approved by President Clinton; it triggered violent protests by the Cuban community in Miami and condemnation of the government's tactics by senior Republicans. In June 2000 a US federal appeals court ruled, however, that the government had acted properly, and rejected an appeal by Elian's US relations that he be granted an asylum hearing. In June the boy and his father returned to Cuba.

International trade agreements
In April 2000, trade talks between Cuban and European Union (EU) officials were cancelled after European officials voted in a United Nations (UN) committee to condemn Cuba's human rights record. However, economic sanctions between Cuba and the USA were eased slightly in July as the US Congress agreed a deal to allow sales of food and medicine to Cuba, exempting them from the economic sanctions which remain in place on other goods. The limited sales of food and medicines went through in October 2000, following pressure from US farmers. The sales were the first to go from the USA to Cuba for 40 years.

In October 2001, Cuba reacted angrily to Russia's announcement in that it would close its remaining spy base on the island, saying no such agreement had yet been reached. The Cubans accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of wanting to please US president George W Bush, his new‐found ally against terrorism. Cuba also stood to lose out financially, as the site had been leased to Russia for around US$200 million per year.

The US cargo ship MV Express and the Mexican ship MV Ikan Mazatlan arrived in the port of Havana on 16 December 2001 with the first direct commercial export of agricultural products from the USA to Cuba in 38 years. The MV Express carried around 500 tonnes of frozen chicken, and the MV Ikan Mazatlan carried around 24,000 tonnes of maize. However, the USA said the shipments were only authorized as humanitarian aid following the devastation caused by Hurricane Michelle the previous month, and did not represent a relaxation of the trade embargo.