Page 21 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Cuba

INTRODUCING CUBA  19
A PORTRAIT

OF CUBA

Images of Cuba show hot sun and fields of sugar cane, tall palm trees
and deep, clear-blue sea. Cuba is indeed all these things, but it is also
a country with a deep-rooted, complex culture in which old traditions
and new intellectual developments co-exist. It is a young and vital island,
a place of music and colour, which, despite severe economic difficulties,
has held on to its unique identity.

Cuba’s identity owes a great deal to abolition of slavery in 1886, the
the fact that it is surrounded by sea as dominant culture was that of the
well as to its geographical position. It is conquering Spanish. However, by
sometimes called the “key to the Gulf” surreptitious means, the African
because of its strategic location between slaves managed to preserve their
North and South America at the entrance songs, musical instruments and dances,
to the Gulf of Mexico, and the island has introduced new spices and tastes to the
been a crossroads since the beginning local cuisine, and continued to worship
of the colonial period. As a result, by their Yoruba gods (see pp26–7).
the mid-1500s, the island’s population The result of this cross-fertilization
consisted of European settlers; Guanah- is a surprising ethnic mosaic of white,
atebey, Siboney and Taíno Indians, black, people of mixed race and Asian
the first of whom arrived in 3000 BC (a Chinese community grew in Havana
and survived struggles against the in the 19th century). The same mosaic
invaders, imported disease and hard characterizes Cuban culture too: the
labour; and thousands of black slaves, bringing together of vastly different
brought over from Africa. Up to the traditions has produced a unique blend.

Colourful old buildings in a small street of Cuba
Raising the Cuban flag, Havana

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