Cuban History The Short Version

Pre-Columbian Society & The Spanish Conquest -- Cuba was not populated by overachieving civilizations in the days before the arrival of the Spanish, as, for example, Mexico , Guatemala , and Peru were. However, Native American tribes that included the Siboney, Taíno, and Guanajatabey (the group that would come to be known as the Arawaks), numbered about 100,000 and had lived on the island since at least 1000 B.C. Hunters, gatherers, and farmers, these native Cubans cultivated cohiba (tobacco), a crop upon which the island's economy would one day depend. The island's relatively peaceful and isolated existence was shattered by the arrival of Christopher Columbus, who dropped anchor along the northeast coast of Cuba on October 27, 1492, and quickly scribbled a notation in his journal exclaiming that the land he'd discovered was "the most beautiful that human eyes have ever seen."

 

 

The Spanish conquest of the island began just a few years later. In 1511, Don Diego Velázquez de Cuellar sailed from neighboring Hispaniola with a band of about 300 conquistadores. Velázquez sailed to Baracoa and made that settlement the first of the famous original seven villas on the island (the others were Bayamo, Havana , Sancti Spíritus, Trinidad , Camagüey, and Santiago de Cuba ). The Spanish process of colonization was identical across the Caribbean and Central and South America : Velázquez and his fellow Spaniards extracted quick riches from the land and people, and made slaves of the native tribes. American Indian resistance led by the Taíno chief Hatuey failed after he was captured and burned at the stake by the Spanish. Thousands of Native Americans soon died from exposure to European viruses the Spaniards brought with them, and entire villages, reduced to forced laborers, committed suicide. By the mid-1500s the native population on the island had declined from more than 100,000 to a mere 3,000. Spanish rule would continue for almost 400 years.

 

 

 

 

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