CUBA

Cuba, country of the West Indies, the largest single island of the archipelago, and one of the more-
influential states of the Caribbean region. The domain of the Arawakan-speaking Taino, who had
displaced even earlier inhabitants, Cuba was claimed by Christopher Columbus for Spain in 1492.

Cuba is situated just south of the Tropic of Cancer at the intersection of the Atlantic Ocean (north and
east), the Gulf of Mexico (west), and the Caribbean Sea (south). Haiti, the nearest neighbouring country,
is 48 miles (77 km) to the east, across the Windward Passage; Jamaica is 87 miles (140 km) to the south;
the Bahamas archipelago extends to within 50 miles (80 km) of the northern coast; and the United
States is about 90 miles (150 km) to the north across the Straits of Florida.

Life in contemporary Cuba is thus challenging, given the limited access to food, transportation, electrical
power, and other necessities. Even so, many Cubans show a fierce pride in their revolutionary society,
the only one of its kind in Latin America. The protagonist of anthropologist Miguel Barnet’s novel
Canción de Rachel

Cuba is a multicultural, largely urban nation, although it has only one major city: Havana (La Habana),
the capital and commercial hub of the country, on the northwestern coast. Handsome if rather run-
down, Havana has a scenic waterfront and is surrounded by fine beaches, an attraction for increasing
numbers of visitors from abroad. Cuba’s other cities—including Santiago, Camagüey, Holguín, and,
especially, Trinidad—offer a rich legacy of colonial Spanish architecture to complement contemporary
buildings.

Spanish is the principal language of Cuba. Although there are no local dialects, the island’s diverse ethnic
groups have influenced speech patterns. Africans, in particular, have greatly enriched the vocabulary and
contributed the soft, somewhat nasal accent and rhythmic intonation that distinguish contemporary
Cuban speech. Some words are of native Indian origin, and a few of these—such as hamaca
(“hammock”)—have passed into other languages. Many practitioners of the Santería religion also speak
Lucumí, a “secret” Yoruboid language of the Niger-Congo family.

Cuban gastronomy is a fusion of several cuisines; Spanish, Taino, African and Caribbean, thanks to this
great influence of different cuisines, Cuban cuisine has a great variety of dishes and flavors.

The Spanish offered a great variety of new products and species with which the dishes were enriched,
the Africans influenced Cuban cuisine by adding numerous new products to it, among which a large
number of tubers stand out, and through all these mixtures it was born Cuban cuisine, whose main
foods are rice, beans, cassava.

Some of the best known dishes of Cuban cuisine are:

Ropa Vieja, moros y cristianos, picadillo a la criolla and langosta.