Cuba

F

Defense

The Cuban Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FAR) has its roots in the revolutionary guerrilla troops who fought under Castro during the revolution in the late 1950s. When Castro came to power in 1959, he amassed the largest standing army in Latin America. He also created a militarized society in which all citizens were on alert against U.S. aggression. All social movements, such as the literacy brigades, were organized and led as though they were military offensives. The FAR, which draws recruits from throughout the population, is intended to fight invasions and wars in foreign lands. It may also be used to suppress insurrection. In peacetime, the FAR serves in national emergencies, such as cleanups after hurricanes and in harvesting the sugar fields when a crop is in danger.

The military is organized under the Ministerio de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias (Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, or MINFAR) and commanded by the president and vice president. The FAR and the PCC are linked through FAR membership in Communist Party organizations. Military officials hold office in the Central Committee and the Politburo, and they sit in the Council of Ministers. The military defends the country, trains young people for war and peace, helps Cubans develop useful skills and work habits, and maintains domestic security.

At home, the FAR defended Cuba in 1961 during the Bay of Pigs invasion, when U.S.-backed Cuban exiles unsuccessfully attempted to invade the island and topple the Castro government. The military also fought abroad for socialist and nationalist causes, and it supported nations who were trying to resist U.S. influence in their internal affairs. From 1960 to 1990 the FAR participated in international revolutionary campaigns in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, most notably in Angola from 1973 to 1990.

The government severely restricted military expenditures beginning in the 1990s and Cuba’s involvement in foreign wars ended. The government also allocated a smaller budget for the military, which fell from $2.2 billion in 1988 to $1,200 million in 2003. It also reduced the size of the military from 180,500 men and women to 49,000 in 2004.

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Despite these military reductions, Cuba has worked to ensure a strong national defense. The government maintains constant preparedness for the People’s War, the government’s term since 1980 for an all-out military conflict between Cuba and the United States in which the people will bear arms in the defense of Cuba. Preparedness involves readiness not only in the regular army, but also among reservists, retired officers, and a 1.3-million-person militia. All of these military resources practice war games and train for war on a regular basis.

The Ministerio del Interior (known as MININT) is Cuba’s state agency responsible for internal security. Within MININT are a number of paramilitary, military, and intelligence branches: the Border Guard Troops; the National Revolutionary Police; the Special Troops, which are under Fidel Castro’s direct command; the Department of State Security Force, which conducts domestic intelligence; and the Department of General Intelligence, which operates international espionage. The MININT is responsible for top security and intelligence operations, and its members are assumed to be absolutely loyal to the revolutionary government. Only high-ranking officers are assigned to handle the secretive work characteristic of the MININT.

G

International Relations

Since the revolution, Cuba has tried to export the ideals of the revolution throughout the world as a means of bringing down capitalism and opposing the U.S. model of constitutional government. United States policy has been directed toward ousting Communist control and bringing Cuba back under U.S. influence. The two nations have clashed in nearly every continent of the world, and Cuba’s survival often relied heavily on the support of the USSR. After the USSR collapsed and a Cuban economic crisis began, active Cuban support for international revolutionary causes ceased. Cuba’s leadership turned its attention to redesigning socialism to include some capitalist activity and trade with capitalist nations. To this end, Cuba formed new alliances with Latin American countries with which it previously had no relations. Trade agreements resulted with capitalist nations, such as Canada, France, Spain, Italy, and the Russian Federation.

The United States has continued to oppose Cuba, regardless of the changes in Cuba’s foreign policy over the past 25 years. In the late 1970s the United States refused to establish diplomatic relations unless Cuba withdrew its military from foreign countries, specifically Angola, released political prisoners, and paid compensation to former owners of nationalized properties. Cuba not only did not leave the foreign countries in which it was involved, but Castro committed troops in Nicaragua, where rebels were fighting to overthrow the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. This action brought an end to secret peace talks between Cuba and the United States. During the 1980s, U.S. president Ronald Reagan viewed Cuba as the source of Communist influence in the Western Hemisphere.

After 1991 the Cuban government offered compensation for seized property, released political prisoners, permitted U.S. news bureaus in Cuba, and stopped trying to export the ideals of the revolution. However, the United States has not reestablished relations with Cuba despite these concessions. The Congress of the United States, first through the Torricelli Law of 1991 and then in the Helms-Burton Law of 1996, demanded elections in Cuba similar to those in the United States and the removal of Castro and his associates. In 1996 U.S.-Cuban relations once again grew hostile after Cuban fighter planes shot down two civilian aircraft piloted by U.S.-based Cuban exiles, which convinced U.S. president Bill Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton Law.

In 1998, however, President Clinton responded to international condemnation of the U.S. economic blockade by relaxing restrictions on the admittance of food and medicine, and on money sent to Cuban citizens from individuals in the United States. Sports also served as the medium for cultural exchange when an arrangement worked out in 1998 through informal diplomatic channels allowed the Baltimore Orioles, a professional U.S. baseball team, and the Cuban All-Stars baseball team to play games in Baltimore, Maryland, and Havana.

Although relations between the Cuban and U.S. governments periodically thaw, citizens of both countries have experienced prohibitions against traveling to, communicating with, and knowing about the other country. But despite each government’s attempts to ignore or vilify the other, their diplomatic policies remained focused on one another as they battle for international approval.

Despite strained relations between the United States and Cuba, the United States maintains a naval base at Guantánamo Bay on Cuban territory. The United States obtained the base under a 1903 agreement between the two countries after the Spanish-American War. A 1934 treaty reaffirmed the U.S. right to lease the site from Cuba. After Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, he stopped cashing annual lease payments after the first check and declared the 1934 lease agreement illegal. The Guantánamo Bay base became a detention center for captured terrorist suspects and other prisoners following the September 11 attacks on the United States and the subsequent war on terror.

H

International Organizations

Cuba is currently a member of the United Nations and the Nonaligned Movement.

VII

History

Cuba’s location has determined the island’s political, social, and economic history. No other political entity in the Western Hemisphere has been as contested as Cuba has, and no other society has passed from colonial status, to a republic, to a socialist state in less than 100 years. The largest and most western island of the Antilles archipelago, Cuba is centrally located between North and South America, and guards access to the Caribbean Sea. For hundreds of years, its strategic position and its rich soil, abundant harbors, and mineral reserves have attracted foreign powers, first Spain, then the United States, and then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

A

Pre-Columbian Society

Cuba’s first inhabitants were indigenous people who arrived by sea, following the trade winds westward from the coast of Venezuela along the islands of the Caribbean. Little evidence remains of the first indigenous people, the Ciboney (or Guanahacabibe), who began settling the island about 1000 bc. The Ciboney lived along the coast and survived by fishing, hunting, and gathering plant foods. They lived in small, seminomadic clans and left no written record of their society, religions, or languages.

A more warlike group of the Arawakan (see Arawak) language family reached Cuba in two waves, beginning with the sub-Taínos, who arrived about ad 900, gradually pushing the Ciboney to the western third of the island. Members of the Arawakan language family lived in thatched houses and were governed by caciques (tribal chiefs). They survived by fishing and collectively working gardens, where they grew cassava, maize (corn), beans, sweet potatoes, yucca, tomatoes, and pineapples. They also grew tobacco, which they used for religious ceremonies and medicinal purposes. A second migratory wave, the Taínos, swept into the eastern coastal area of Cuba from the neighboring island of Hispaniola in the 15th century, just before the Spanish conquest.

When explorer Christopher Columbus reached the island on October 27, 1492, Cuba’s indigenous population numbered approximately 112,000, with 92,000 sub-Taínos, 10,000 Taínos, and 10,000 Ciboney. Columbus claimed the island for Spain, the nation that had sponsored his voyage.

B

Spanish Rule

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