South of South Beach

Cuba is an island roughly the size of Pennsylvania, strategically located in the Caribbean Sea, just 90 shark-infested miles (145 shark-infested km) from Florida. Its earliest inhabitants arrived thousands of years ago and lived an island-style hunting and gathering life (which sounds a lot better than, say, an Arctic-style hunting and gathering life).

By the time the first Europeans arrived--at the start of the 16th century--the island was home to perhaps 100,000 people. Most of those folks lived in thatched houses and survived by hunting, fishing, and growing crops, especially corn, beans, sweet potatoes, pineapples, and tobacco.

Spanish Spoils

Christopher Columbus landed in Cuba in 1492, and charted its southern coast in 1494, but he thought the place was an Asian peninsula. In 1511, Spanish settlers led by the conquistador Diego Velàzquez began to arrive in force--and promptly forced the native Cubans to do their bidding.

By the 1550s, European guns, germs, and ruthless exploitation had decimated the indigenous population, which fell to perhaps 3,000 people. At the same time, stories of easily mined precious metals enticed many Spaniards to the American mainland. To keep their own mines and farms working, Cuba's remaining Spaniards relied increasingly on African slaves.

The 17th century produced epidemics, pirate raids, and attempts by other European powers to capture Cuban spoils. It also produced a racially mixed Cuban population. Few Spanish women settled in Cuba, and African slaves were legally empowered to buy their freedom. Before long, biracial babies were common, and so were fertile mixtures of music, language, and other cultural traditions.

Sugar Highs and Lows

During the 18th century, sugar became Cuba's main cash crop, and the plantations that produced it began to expand. Other foreign trade picked up, too, especially after the British captured Havana in 1762. The British turned the port back over to Spain after just 10 months, but Havana's importance as a commercial center continued to grow.

So did Cuba itself. In fact, over the next century, the island's population increased nearly tenfold. The biggest boom came after 1791, when a slave revolt in Haiti destroyed many of that nation's sugar plantations--and so made Cuba the world's chief sugar producer.

By the mid-19th century, Cuba's slave-powered plantations fed steam-powered sugar mills that generated nearly one-third of the world's sugar. For sugar tycoons, life was sweet. For slaves--many of whom were literally worked to death--it was miserable. For others, including a population of free blacks nearly as large as the population of slaves, it was somewhere in between.

Meanwhile, some U.S. planters took a keen interest in Cuba, which traded more with the United States than with mother Spain. In 1848, the United States offered to buy Cuba for $100 million. In 1854, the offer increased to $130 million. But Spain wasn't selling. Cuba stayed Spanish--until Cubans and Americans made Cuba Cuban. We'll cover that tomorrow.

Steve Sampson
August 15, 2006

Want to learn more?
See snapshots of Cuba