Unlike most countries in Latin America, Cuba's favorite sport is not soccer. It's baseball! Baseball came to Cuba from the United States in the s. Many international baseball stars have come from Cuba, and the Cuban national team is one of the best in the world. Cuba has many different habitats, from mountain forests to jungles and grasslands. There are even small deserts. These different ecosystems are home to unique plants and animals found only in Cuba. Many interesting creatures live in Cuba's thick forests.
Most famous is the bee hummingbird, the world's smallest bird. Adult bee hummingbirds grow to only two inches five centimeters long. The world's smallest frog also lives in Cuba. Cuba is a socialist state run by the Cuban Communist Party. Cubans vote for their leaders, but the communist party is the only legal party. Fidel Castro was president, prime minister, and commander of the armed forces until February , when he stepped down due to a lengthy illness.
The United States had been hostile toward Cuba since the communists took power in , but in the United States reopened its embassy in Cuba—where American diplomats live to work with the Cuban government. Soon after, Cuba did the same in the United States.
Cuba's original inhabitants were the Ciboney and Guanahatabey people. About a thousand years ago, the Taino people from Venezuela took over the island. In , forces from Spain defeated the Taino and claimed the island as a Spanish territory. The Spanish forced many of the Taino people into slave labor. Most died from overwork and from diseases brought by the Europeans. Hundreds of thousands of African slaves were then brought to Cuba, mainly to plant and harvest sugarcane.
American forces helped drive the Spanish out of Cuba in , and by , Cuba had won independence. But the United States had a strong influence over the island. In , communist revolutionaries, led by Fidel Castro, took control.
All rights reserved. Personality Quizzes. Funny Fill-In. It also defied predictions that it would not survive the collapse of its one-time supporter, the Soviet Union. Since the fall of the US-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in , Cuba has been a one-party state led by Mr Castro and - since February - by his chosen successor and younger brother, Raul. Fidel Castro exercised control over virtually all aspects of Cuban life through the Communist Party and its affiliated mass organisations, the government bureaucracy and the state security apparatus.
But, at least partly because of the US trade sanctions, he failed to diversify the economy. President: Miguel Diaz-Canel. Miguel Diaz-Canel became president in April in a handover ending six decades of rule by the Castro family. Mr Diaz-Canel, aged 57 at the time of his inauguration, is a former engineer born after the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. He has promised to maintain the island's one-party communist system after being chosen president by parliament.
Cuba has the most repressive media environment in the Americas, says Freedom House. Almost all traditional media are state run. Online access is tightly controlled and prohibitively expensive. Some key dates in Cuba's history:. The confrontation ends with the Soviets removing the missiles and the US agreeing never to invade Cuba.
It is the start of 15 years of war in which , Cubans will fight.
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