42 Facts About Cuba

1. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Atlantic Ocean meet.

2. Cuba is the second-most populous country in the Caribbean after Haiti, with over 11 million inhabitants.

3. Territory that is Cuba was inhabited by the Ciboney Taino people from the 4th millennium BC until Spanish colonization in the 15th century.

4. Cuba is one of a few extant Marxist–Leninist socialist states, where the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution.

5. Cuba is a founding member of the United Nations, the G77, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States, ALBA, and the Organization of American States.

6. When Columbus arrived, they were the dominant culture in Cuba, having an estimated population of 150,000.

7. Cuba became Cuba's first permanent governor to reside in Havana instead of Santiago, and he built Havana's first church made of masonry.

8. Cuba developed slowly and, unlike the plantation islands of the Caribbean, had a diversified agriculture.

9. Slavery in Cuba was abolished in 1875 but the process was completed only in 1886.

10. General Valeriano Weyler, the military governor of Cuba, herded the rural population into what he called, described by international observers as "fortified towns".

11. Cuba gained formal independence from the US on 20 May 1902, as the Republic of Cuba.

12. Cuba was replaced by Carlos Manuel de Cespedes y Quesada.

13. In 1958, Cuba was a well-advanced country in comparison to other Latin American regions.

14. Cuba was affected by perhaps the largest labor union privileges in Latin America, including bans on dismissals and mechanization.

15. In 1963, Cuba sent 686 troops together with 22 tanks and other military equipment to support Algeria in the Sand War against Morocco.

16. In 1964, Cuba organized a meeting of Latin American communists in Havana and stoked a civil war in the capital of the Dominican Republic in 1965, which prompted the US military to intervene there.

17. Cuba supported the MPLA in Angola and Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia (Ogaden War).

18. In November 1975, Cuba poured more than 65,000 troops and 400 Soviet-made tanks into Angola in one of the fastest military mobilizations in history.

19. In March 1978, Cuba sent 12,000 regular troops to Ethiopia, assisted by mechanized Soviet battalions, to help defeat a Somali invasion.

20. Effective 14 January 2013, Cuba ended the requirement established in 1961, that any citizens who wish to travel abroad were required to obtain an expensive government permit and a letter of invitation.

21. Additionally, while the embargo between the United States and Cuba was not immediately lifted, it was relaxed to allow import, export, and certain limited commerce.

22. Under Castro, Cuba was heavily involved in wars in Africa, Central America and Asia.

23. In 2008, the European Union and Cuba agreed to resume full relations and cooperation activities.

24. In 2017, Cuba signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

25. Cuba was ranked 19th by the number of imprisoned journalists of any nation in 2021 according to various sources, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch.

26. Cuba ranked 5th in the hemisphere in per capita income, 3rd in life expectancy, 2nd in per capita ownership of automobiles and telephones, and 1st in the number of television sets per inhabitant.

27. Cuba took limited free-market oriented measures to alleviate severe shortages of food, consumer goods, and services.

28. The US embargo against Cuba was instituted in 1960 in response to nationalization of US-citizen-held property and was maintained on the grounds of perceived human rights violations.

29. On 2 August 2011, The New York Times reported that Cuba reaffirmed its intent to legalize "buying and selling" of private property before the year's end.

30. In May 2019, Cuba imposed rationing of staples such as chicken, eggs, rice, beans, soap and other basic goods.

31. Cuba is a major producer of refined cobalt, a by-product of nickel mining.

32. In 2006, Cuba started to test-drill these locations for possible exploitation.

33. Cuba recorded 2,688,000 international tourists in 2011, the third-highest figure in the Caribbean.

34. Cuba is an archipelago of nearly 4,200 islands, cays and islets located in the northern Caribbean Sea at the confluence with the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

35. Cuba is the principal island, surrounded by four smaller groups of islands: the Colorados Archipelago on the northwestern coast, the Sabana-Camaguey Archipelago on the north-central Atlantic coast, the Jardines de la Reina on the south-central coast and the Canarreos Archipelago on the southwestern coast.

36. Cuba signed the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity on 12 June 1992, and became a party to the convention on 8 March 1994.

37. Religious landscape of Cuba is strongly defined by syncretisms of various kinds.

38. In 2015, Cuba became the first country to eradicate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis, a milestone hailed by the World Health Organization as "one of the greatest public health achievements possible".

39. The government of Cuba provides an online encyclopedia website called EcuRed that operates in a "wiki" format.

40. Romanticist Miguel Barnet, who wrote Everyone Dreamed of Cuba, reflects a more melancholy Cuba.

41. Cuba is a dominant force in amateur boxing, consistently achieving high medal tallies in major international competitions.

42. Cuba provides a national team that competes in the Olympic Games.