Cuba

Republic of Cuba
República de Cuba (Spanish)
Flag
Coat of arms
Motto: Patria o Muerte, Venceremos
("Homeland or Death, We Shall Overcome!")[1]
Anthem: La Bayamesa
("The Bayamo Song")[2]
Cuba, shown in dark green
Capital
and largest city
Havana
23°8′N 82°23′W / 23.133°N 82.383°W / 23.133; -82.383
Official languagesSpanish
Ethnic groups
(2012)[a][3]
  • 64.12% White
  • 26.62% Mixed
  • 9.26% Black
Religion
(2020)[4]
Demonym(s)Cuban
GovernmentUnitary communist state
• First Secretary and President[b]
Miguel Díaz-Canel
• Vice President
Salvador Valdés Mesa
• Prime Minister
Manuel Marrero Cruz
• President of the National Assembly
Esteban Lazo Hernández
LegislatureNational Assembly of People's Power
Independence 
from Spain and the United States
• Declaration of Independence
10 October 1868
• War of Independence
24 February 1895
• Recognized (Handed over to the United States from Spain)
10 December 1898
• Republic declared (Independence from the United States)
20 May 1902
26 July 1953 – 1 January 1959
• Current constitution
10 April 2019
Area
• Total
110,860[5] km2 (42,800 sq mi) (104th)
• Water (%)
0.94
Population
• 2024 estimate
 10,966,038[6][7] (95th)
• 2022 census
 11,089,511[8]
• Density
88.8/km2 (230.0/sq mi) (122nd)
GDP (PPP)2015 estimate
• Total
$254.865 billion[9]
• Per capita
$22,237[9][10]
GDP (nominal)2023 estimate
• Total
 $201.986 billion[11] (59th)
• Per capita
 $18,329[11] (60th)
Gini (2000)38.0[12]
medium inequality
HDI (2023) 0.762[13]
high (97th)
CurrencyCuban peso (CUP)
Time zoneUTC−5 (CST)
• Summer (DST)
UTC−4 (CDT)
Date formatdd/mm/yyyy
Calling code+53
ISO 3166 codeCU
Internet TLD.cu
  1. ^ Data represents racial self-identification from Cuba's 2012 national census.
  2. ^ The most powerful political position is First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, not President. The first secretary controls the Politburo and the Secretariat, Cuba's top decision-making bodies, making the officeholder de facto leader of Cuba.

Cuba,[a] officially the Republic of Cuba,[b] is an island country in the Caribbean, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the northern Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean meet. Cuba is located east of the Yucatán Peninsula, south of both Florida (the United States) and the Bahamas, west of Hispaniola (Haiti and the 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 10 million inhabitants. It is the largest country in the Caribbean by area.

The territory that is now Cuba was inhabited as early as the 4th millennium BC, with the Guanahatabey and Taíno peoples inhabiting the area at the time of Spanish colonization in the 15th century. It was then a colony of Spain, through the abolition of slavery in 1886, until the Spanish–American War of 1898, after which Cuba 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 over the state, especially as led by Fulgencio Batista.

In 1940, Cuba implemented a new constitution, but mounting political unrest culminated in the 1952 Cuban coup d'état and the subsequent dictatorship of Batista. The Batista 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, Castro dispatched tens of thousands of troops across the Atlantic in support of Marxist governments in Africa. 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.

Cuba is a socialist state in which the role of the Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Cuba has an authoritarian government wherein political opposition is prohibited.[14][15] Censorship is extensive and independent journalism is repressed;[16][17][18] Reporters Without Borders has characterized Cuba as one of the worst countries for press freedom.[19][18] Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America.[20] 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.[21]

Cuba has one of the world's few planned 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 the region on several socioeconomic indicators, such as literacy,[22][23] infant 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.[24] Cuba has a universal health care system which provides free medical treatment to all Cuban citizens,[25][26] although challenges include low salaries for doctors, poor facilities, poor provision of equipment, and the frequent absence of essential drugs.[27][28]

A 2023 study by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH) estimated that 88% of the population lives in extreme poverty.[29] According to the World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations, rationed food meets only a fraction of daily nutritional needs for many Cubans, leading to health issues.[30] 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, having endured for almost six decades.[31]

  1. ^ "Cuban Peso Bills". Central Bank of Cuba. 2015. Archived from the original on 26 September 2018. Retrieved 14 February 2017.
  2. ^ "National symbols". Government of Cuba. Archived from the original on 15 January 2016. Retrieved 7 September 2009.
  3. ^ "Central America:: Cuba – The World Factbook". Central Intelligence Agency. Archived from the original on 12 August 2021. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  4. ^ "Cuba – The World Factbook". Central Intelligence Agency. 6 October 2021. Archived from the original on 12 August 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
  5. ^ "Cuba". Central Intelligence Agency. 20 February 2023. Archived from the original on 12 August 2021. Retrieved 20 November 2023.
  6. ^ Torres, Nora Gámez (24 July 2024). "Cuba admits to massive emigration wave: a million people left in two years amid crisis". Miami Herald. Retrieved 13 August 2024.
  7. ^ "Cuba". The World Factbook (2025 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 22 June 2023. (Archived 2023 edition.)
  8. ^ "Indicadores Demográficos por provincias y municipios 2022" (in Spanish). Oficina Nacional de Estadística e Information República de Cuba. Archived from the original on 14 March 2020. Retrieved 8 June 2023.
  9. ^ a b "World Bank GDP PPP 2015, 28 April 2017 PDF". Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  10. ^ "World Bank total population of Cuba in 2015 (GDP PPP divided by Population data)". Archived from the original on 11 November 2020. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  11. ^ a b "Basic Data Selection". United Nations. Archived from the original on 9 March 2025. Retrieved 9 March 2025.
  12. ^ "Cuba grapples with growing inequality". Reuters. Archived from the original on 23 December 2015. Retrieved 21 July 2013.
  13. ^ "Human Development Report 2023/24" (PDF). United Nations Development Programme. 13 March 2024. Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 March 2024. Retrieved 13 March 2024.
  14. ^ Levitsky, Steven; Way, Lucan A. (16 August 2010). Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge University Press. pp. 361–363. ISBN 978-1-139-49148-8. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  15. ^ Lachapelle, Jean; Levitsky, Steven; Way, Lucan A.; Casey, Adam E. (2020). "Social Revolution and Authoritarian Durability". World Politics. 72 (4): 557–600. doi:10.1017/S0043887120000106. ISSN 0043-8871. S2CID 225096277. Archived from the original on 21 January 2022. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  16. ^ Stein, Elizabeth Ann (2016). "Information and Civil Unrest in Dictatorships". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.35. ISBN 978-0-19-022863-7. Archived from the original on 6 August 2021. Retrieved 6 August 2021.
  17. ^ "Six facts about censorship in Cuba". Amnesty International. 11 March 2016. Archived from the original on 11 October 2022. Retrieved 17 December 2020.
  18. ^ a b "Press Freedom Index 2015" Archived 27 August 2015 at the Wayback Machine, Reporters Without Borders. Retrieved 12 November 2015
  19. ^ "Press Freedom Index 2008" (PDF). Reporters Without Borders. 2008. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2009.
  20. ^ Rangel, Carlos (1977). The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship with the United States. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. pp. 3–5. ISBN 978-0-15-148795-0. Skidmore, Thomas E.; Smith, Peter H. (2005). Modern Latin America (6 ed.). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 1–10. ISBN 978-0-19-517013-9.
  21. ^ "US rejects Cuba demand to hand back Guantanamo Bay base Archived 7 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine". BBC News. 30 January 2015.
  22. ^ "Pre-Castro Cuba | American Experience". PBS. Archived from the original on 22 July 2021. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  23. ^ Greenberg, Jon (24 February 2020). "Fact-checking Bernie Sanders' claim on Cuba literacy under Castro". PolitiFact. Archived from the original on 20 July 2021. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  24. ^ Cabello, Juan José; et al. (2012). "An approach to sustainable development: the case of Cuba". Environment, Development and Sustainability. 14 (4): 573–591. Bibcode:2012EDSus..14..573C. doi:10.1007/s10668-012-9338-8. S2CID 153707220.
  25. ^ Geloso, Vincent; Pavlik, Jamie Bologna (1 April 2021). "The Cuban revolution and infant mortality: A synthetic control approach". Explorations in Economic History. 80 101376. doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2020.101376. ISSN 0014-4983. S2CID 229073336. Archived from the original on 20 July 2021. Retrieved 20 July 2021.
  26. ^ Kessler, Glenn (1 December 2016). "Justin Trudeau's claim that Castro made 'significant improvements' to Cuban health care and education". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 19 August 2017.
  27. ^ Cite error: The named reference :7 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  28. ^ Cite error: The named reference :8 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  29. ^ "The State of Social Rights in Cuba: VI Report 2023" (PDF). Observatorio Cubano de Derechos Humanos (OCDH). 2023. Archived (PDF) from the original on 5 October 2023. Retrieved 2 October 2023.
  30. ^ "Un informe de la ONU señala que los cubanos de 14 a 60 años sufren de malnutrición". 14ymedio (in Spanish). 5 April 2023. Retrieved 8 October 2023.
  31. ^ Padinger, Germán (9 November 2021). "En qué consiste el embargo comercial de Estados Unidos sobre Cuba" (in Spanish). CNN. Archived from the original on 23 September 2023. Retrieved 7 October 2023.


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