INTRODUCTION
Fidel CASTRO led a rebel army to victory in 1959; his iron rule has held the country together since. Cuba's communist revolution, with Soviet support, was exported throughout Latin America and Africa during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. The country is now slowly recovering from a severe economic recession in 1990, following the withdrawal of former Soviet subsidies, worth $4 billion to $6 billion annually. Havana portrays its difficulties as the result of the US embargo in place since 1961. Illicit migration to the US - using homemade rafts, alien smugglers, or falsified visas - is a continuing problem. Some 3,000 Cubans took to the Straits of Florida in 2000; the US Coast Guard interdicted only about 35% of these.
CAPITAL: Havana (+5 GMT)
CURRENCY: Cuban peso
MAJOR LANGUAGE(S): Spanish
CALLING CODE: 53
VOLTAGE: 110V
PRIMARY RELIGION(S): Roman Catholic
SUGGESTED LINKS view all links
Cuba: Government website
(in Spanish) Provides essential information of regulations to invest in Cuba, the page has links to the ministries of internal and external commerce, to the national office of statistics and to the Law for investments in Cuba.
Better www.cabaweb.cu
Cuba: Chamber of commerce
(in Spanish) A portal to business in Cuba, it has news, statistics on imports/exports, products, etc. It also contains valuable information on the paperwork needed to establish e-commerce in Cuba, a directory of Cuban companies and a link to the Cuban Custom Office.
www.camaracuba.com
STATISTICS
ECONOMY
GDP: purchasing power parity - $19.2 billion (2000 est.)
GDP - real growth rate: 5.6% (2000 est.)
GDP - per capita: purchasing power parity - $1,700 (2000 est.)
GDP - composition by sector:
agriculture: 7%
industry: 37%
services: 56%
Industrial production growth rate: 5% (2000 est.)
Household income or consumption by percentage share:
lowest 10%: NA%
highest 10%: NA%
Inflation rate (consumer prices): 0.3% (1999 est.)
Labor force: 4.3 million (2000 est.)
Labor force - by occupation: agriculture 25%, industry 24%, services 51% (1998)
Unemployment rate: 5.5% (2000 est.)
Budget:
revenues: 13.5 billion
expenditures: 14.3 billion, (2000 est.)
Exports: $1.8 billion (f.o.b., 2000 est.)
Exports - partners: Russia 23%, Netherlands 23%, Canada 13% (1999)
Imports: $3.4 billion (f.o.b., 2000 est.)
Imports - partners: Spain 18%, Venezuela 13%, Canada 8% (1999)
Debt - external: $11.1 billion (convertible
Economic aid - recipient: $
PEOPLE
Population: 11,184,023 (July 2001 est.)
Population growth rate: 0.37% (2001 est.)
Infant mortality rate: 7.39 deaths/1,000 live births (2001 est.)
Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 76.41 years
male: 74.02 years
female: 78.94 years (2001 est.)
Total fertility rate: 1.6 children born/woman (2001 est.)
Ethnic groups:
mulatto 51%, white 37%, black 11%, Chinese 1%
Nationality:
noun: Cuban(s)
adjective: Cuban
Religions:
nominally 85% Roman Catholic prior to CASTRO assuming power; Protestants, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, and Santeria are also represented
Languages:
Spanish
Literacy:
total population: 95.7%
male: 96.2%
female: 95.3% (1995 est.)
GEOGRAPHY
Location:
Caribbean, island between the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean, south of Florida
Area:
total: 110,860 sq km
land: 110,860 sq km
water: 0 sq km
Land boundaries:
total: 29 km
border countries: US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay 29 km
note: Guantanamo Naval Base is leased by the US and thus remains part of Cuba
Coastline: 3,735 km
Climate:
tropical; moderated by trade winds; dry season (November to April); rainy season (May to October)
Terrain:
mostly flat to rolling plains, with rugged hills and mountains in the southeast
Elevation extremes:
lowest point: Caribbean Sea 0 m
highest point: Pico Turquino 2,005 m
COMMUNICATION/TRANSPORTATION
Telephones: 473,031 (2000)
Cellular Telephones: 2,994 (1997)
Internet Country Code: .cu
Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 4 (2001)
Internet Users: 60,000 (2000)
Railways: 11,969 (2000)
Highways: 60,858 (1997)
Airports: 171 (2000 est.)
HISTORY
Spanish settlers established sugar cane and tobacco as Cuba's primary products. As the native Indian population died out, African slaves were imported to work the plantations. Slavery was abolished in 1886.
Cuba was the last major Spanish colony to gain independence, following a 50-year struggle begun in 1850. Jose Marti, Cuba's national hero, began the final push for independence in 1895. In 1898, after the USS Maine sunk in Havana Harbor on February 15 due to an explosion of undetermined origin, the United States entered the conflict. In December of that year Spain relinquished control of Cuba to the United States with the Treaty of Paris. On May 20, 1902, the United States granted Cuba its independence, but retained the right to intervene to preserve Cuban independence and stability under the Platt Amendment. In 1934, the amendment was repealed and the United States and Cuba reaffirmed the 1903 agreement which leased the Guantanamo Bay naval base to the United States.
Cuba was often ruled by military figures, who either obtained or remained in power by force. Fulgencio Batista, an army sergeant, organized a non-commissioned officer revolt in September 1933 and wielded significant power behind the scenes until he was elected president in 1940. Batista was voted out of office in 1944. Running for president again in 1952, Batista seized power in a bloodless coup three months before the election was to take place, suspended the balloting, and began ruling by decree.
Fidel Castro, who was running for a seat in the Chamber of Representatives, circulated a petition to depose Batista's government on the grounds that it had illegitimately suspended the electoral process. On July 26, 1953 Castro led a failed attack on the Moncada army barracks near Santiago de Cuba and was jailed and subsequently went into exile in Mexico. While in Mexico, Castro organized the 26th of July Movement with the goal of overthrowing Batista, and the group sailed to Cuba on board the yatch Granma landing in the eastern part of the island in December 1956.
Batista's dictatorial rule fueled increasing popular discontent and the rise of active urban resistance groups, a fertile political environment for Castro's 26th of July Movement. Faced with a corrupt and ineffective military itself dispirited by a U.S. Government embargo on weapons sales to Cuba and public indignation and revulsion at his brutality toward opponents, Batista fled on January 1, 1959. Within months of taking control, Castro moved to consolidate power by marginalizing other resistance figures and imprisoning or executing opponents. As the revolution became more radical, hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled the island.
Castro declared Cuba a socialist state on April 16, 1961. For the next 30 years, Castro pursued close relations with the Soviet Union until the demise of the U.S.S.R. in 1991. Relations between the U.S. and Cuba deteriorated rapidly as the Cuban regime expropriated U.S. properties and moved towards adoption of a one-party Communist system. In response, the United States imposed an embargo on Cuba in October 1960, and broke diplomatic relations on January 3, 1961. Tensions between the two governments peaked during the October 1962 missile crisis.
ECONOMY
The Cuban Government continues to adhere to socialist principles in organizing its state-controlled economy. Most of the means of production are owned and run by the government and about 75 percent of the labor force is employed by the state.
The Cuban economy is still recovering from a decline in gross domestic product of at least 35 percent between 1989 and 1993 due to the loss of Soviet subsidies. To alleviate the economic crisis, the government introduced a few market-oriented reforms including opening to tourism, allowing foreign investment, legalizing the dollar, and authorizing self-employment for some 150 occupations. These measures resulted in modest economic growth; the official statistics, however, are deficient and as a result provide an incomplete measure of Cuba's real economic situation. Living conditions in 1999 remain well below the 1989 level.
In the mid 1990s tourism surpassed sugar, long the mainstay of the Cuban economy, as the primary source of foreign exchange. Tourism figures prominently in the Cuban Government's plans for development, and a top official cast is as the "heart of the economy." Havana devotes significant resources to building new tourist facilities and renovating historic structures for use in the tourism sector. Cuban officials estimate roughly 1.6 million tourists visited Cuba in 1999 with about $1.9 billion in gross revenues. The official projections for 2000 are only slightly higher than in 1999. Independent analysts and journalists partially attributed low numbers in January to Y2K concerns.
Sugar remains an important part of the Cuban economy with large amounts of land, labor, and other resources dedicated to the industry. Sugar production in 1989 was over 8 million tons, but fell to about 3.5 million tons in the 1994-95 harvest, one of the worst on record. With increased fertilizers and management attention, subsequent harvests have improved but remain well below the 1989 level. Prospects for regaining that level of output are poor unless the Cuban Government undertakes substantial reform of the sugar industry, something it has been reluctant to do.
To help keep the economy afloat, Havana actively courts foreign investment, which often takes the form of joint ventures with the Cuban Government holding half of the equity, management contracts for tourism facilities, or financing for the sugar harvest. Cuban officials said in early 1998 that there were a total of 332 joint ventures. Many of these are loans or contracts for management, supplies, or services normally not considered equity investment in Western economies. Investors are constrained by the U.S.-Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act which provides sanctions for those who "traffic" in property expropriated from U.S. citizens. As of March 1998, 15 executives of three foreign companies have been excluded from entry into the United States. Over a dozen companies have pulled out of Cuba or altered their plans to invest there due to the threat of action under the Libertad Act.
In 1993 the Cuban Government made it legal for its people to possess and use the U.S. dollar. Since then, the dollar has become the major currency in use. To capture the hard currency flowing into the island through tourism and remittances--estimated at $500-800 million annually--the government has set up state-run dollar stores throughout Cuba that sell food, household, and clothing items. The gap in the standard of living has widened between those with access to dollars and those without. Jobs that can earn dollar salaries or tips from foreign businesses and tourists have become highly desirable. It is common to meet doctors, engineers, scientists, and other professionals working in restaurants or as taxi drivers.
To provide jobs for workers laid off due to the economic crisis, furnish services the government was having difficulty providing, and to try to bring some forms of black market activity into legal--and therefore controllable--channels, Havana in 1993 legalized self-employment for some 150 occupations. The government tightly controls the small private sector, which has fluctuated in size from 150,000 to 209,000, by regulating and taxing it. For example, owners of small private restaurant can seat no more than 12 people and can only employ family members to help with the work. Set monthly fees must be paid regardless of income earned and frequent inspections yield stiff fines when any of the many self-employment regulations are violated. Rather than expanding private sector opportunities, in recent years, the government has been attempting to squeeze more of these private sector entrepreneurs out of business and back to the public sector. Many have opted to enter the informal economy or black market.
Prolonged austerity and the state-controlled economy's inefficiency in providing adequate goods and services have created conditions for a flourishing informal economy in Cuba. As the variety and amount of goods available in state-run peso stores has declined, Cubans have turned increasingly to the black market to obtain needed food, clothing, and household items. Pilferage of items from the workplace to sell on the black market or illegally offering services on the sidelines of official employment is common. Recognizing that Cubans must engage in such activity to make ends meet and that attempts to shut the informal economy down would be futile, the government concentrates its control efforts on ideological appeals against theft and shutting down large organized operations. Acknowledging the importance of informal economy in the daily lives of Cubans, the government took black market prices into account when calculating the 1998 consumer price index. Although the government claimed zero inflation in the peso markets in 1999, many goods are simply no longer available in this market and must be purchased in the more expensive dollar stores.
Cuba's precarious economic position is complicated by the high price it must pay for foreign financing. The Cuban Government defaulted on most of its international debt in 1986 and does not have access to credit from international financial institutions like the World Bank, which means Havana must rely heavily on short-term loans to finance imports, chiefly food and fuel. Because of its poor credit rating, an $11 billion hard currency debt, and the risks associated with Cuban investment, interest rates have reportedly been as high as 22 percent.
GOVERNMENT
Cuba is a totalitarian state controlled by President Fidel Castro, who is Chief of State, Head of Government, First Secretary of the PCC, and commander in chief of the armed forces. Castro seeks to control most aspects of Cuban life through the Communist Party and its affiliated mass organizations, the government bureaucracy, and the state security apparatus. The Ministry of Interior is the principal organ of state security and control.
According to the Cuban Constitution, the National Assembly of People's Power, and its Council of State when the body is not in session, has supreme authority in the Cuban system. Since the National Assembly meets only twice a year for a few days each time, the 31-member Council of State wields power. The Council of Ministers, through its nine-member executive committee, handles the administration of the of the state-controlled economy. Fidel Castro is President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers and his brother Raul serves as First Vice President of both bodies in addition to being Minister of Defense.
Although the constitution theoretically provides for independent courts, it explicitly subordinates them to the National Assembly and to the Council of State. The People's Supreme Court is the highest judicial body. Due process is routinely denied to Cuban citizens, particularly in cases involving political offenses. The constitution states that all legally recognized civil liberties can be denied to anyone who opposes the "decision of the Cuban people to build socialism."
The Communist Party is constitutionally recognized as Cuba's only legal political party. The party monopolizes all government positions, including judicial offices. Though not a formal requirement, party membership is virtually a de facto prerequisite for high-level official positions and professional advancement in most areas, although non-party members are sometimes allowed to serve in the National Assembly.
Foreign Relations
Cuba's once-ambitious foreign policy has been scaled back and redirected as a result of economic hardship and the end of the Cold War. Cuba aims to find new sources of trade, aid, and foreign investment, and to promote opposition to U.S. policy, especially the trade embargo and the 1996 Libertad Act. Cuba has relations with over 160 countries and has civilian assistance workers -- principally medical -- in more than 20 nations.
Cuba appears to have largely abandoned the support for guerrilla movements that typified its involvement in regional politics in Latin America and Africa. In the past, Cuba's support for Latin guerrilla movements, its Marxist-Leninist government, and its alignment with the U.S.S.R., had contributed to its isolation in the hemisphere. In January 1962, the Organization of American States (OAS) suspended Cuba. Cuba now has diplomatic or commercial relations with most countries in Latin American and the Caribbean.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Cuba expanded its military presence abroad, spending millions of dollars in exporting revolutions; deployments reached 50,000 troops in Angola, 24,000 in Ethiopia, 1,500 in Nicaragua, and hundreds more elsewhere. In Angola, Cuban troops, supported logistically by the U.S.S.R., backed the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in its effort to take power after Portugal granted Angola its independence. Cuban forces played a key role in Ethiopia's war against Somalia and remained there in substantial numbers as a garrison force for a decade. Cubans served in a non-combat advisory role in Mozambique and the Congo. Cuba also used the Congo as a logistical support center for Cuba's Angola mission.
In the late 1980s, Cuba began to pull back militarily. Cuba unilaterally removed its forces from Ethiopia; met the timetable of the 1988 Angola-Namibia accords by completing the withdrawal of its forces from Angola before July 1991; and ended military assistance to Nicaragua following the Sandinistas' 1990 electoral defeat. In January 1992, following the peace agreement in El Salvador, Castro stated that Cuban support for insurgents was a thing of the past.
Sources: CIA World Factbook,
U.S. Dept. of State Country Background Notes (Source Date: 09/2001)
HAVANA
Havana is just another city of the world but once you arrive here you begin to see the difference. It is not just the beauty or uglyness of some places but the people you meet. You find good and bad but all friendly.
"Path of Change"
I've set the scene with my actions so blind,
All the ranting and racing, so out of my mind,
Now It's morning again, that same empty house,
They huddled that corner, like a scared little mouse.
Can they ever forgive, can they ever forget.
I feel so low, so full of regret.
Though lucky this time not waking in gaol.
These nights on the bottle I know It's betrayal.
I'll reach out now, that path most be found.
Back with my family and our own piece of ground.
Havana
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