Cuba and Havana: Their History, Population and Territory

Abstract

The paper begins by remarking that although the city and island in question have been from the times of Columbus thought of as a sort of Paradise on Earth, the historical facts of their history would rather seem to bespeak a Hell. Mention is made of the mass suicide of the island 's indigenous population in the wake of its maltreatment by their Spanish invaders, the consequences upon the island' s being strategically placed at the way into both the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean this making its deep bays natural havens for both shipping and their freight and of the mass kidnapping of hundreds of thousands of Africans in the period from the 17th to 19'h century to serve in the fields to sate Europe ' s appetite for sugar and tobacco. Depopulated, its forests laid low, with the coming of the railways the population shifted to the towns, a process that led to neo/classical Havana becoming, despite the friction between its Spanish and Creole population, one of the most brilliant capitals in Latin America. After achieving her independence, at the beginning of the 20". C, the paper sees a state of conflict also arising as between the Iberian tradition of the compact city and the Anglo-Saxon suburban model for the same, this leading to the capital's becoming over dimensioned and out of keeping with the country' s social and economic reality. It becoming a first world city in a third world state. The Cuban revolution strove to remedy this and cut the city's importance back down to scale, changing it when doing so from being a pleasure zone into a productive work place.