9781422279809

The Culture and People of Cuba

CUBA

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

HAITI

PUERTO RICO (U.S.)

JAMAICA

Exploring Cuba Arts and Literature of Cuba

Cuba Under the Castros Cuba: Facts and Figures Cuban Music, Dance, and Celebrations The Culture and People of Cuba The Opening of Cuba, 2008-Present

The Culture and People of Cuba

John Ziff

Mason Crest Philadelphia

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Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com ©2018 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc.

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on file at the Library of Congress ISBN: 978-1-4222-3813-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4222-7980-9 (ebook) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4222-3337-5 (hc) ISBN 978-1-4222-8622-7 (ebook)

1. Southwestern States—Juvenile literature. 2. Arizona—Juvenile literature. 3. California—Juvenile literature. 4. Nevada—Juvenile literature. I. Title. F785.7.L37 2015 979—dc23 2014050200

E XPLORING C UBA series ISBN: 978-1-4222-3808-0

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Table of Contents 1: A Unique Mix ..........................................................7 2: A Patriotic People..................................................25 3: Of Men andWomen, Marriage and Family Life ..39 4: Faith in a Communist Land ..................................51 5: Pastimes and Recreations ....................................61 Series Glossary of Key Terms....................................74 Further Reading ........................................................76 Internet Resources ....................................................77 Index ..........................................................................78 Photo Credits/About the Author..............................80

Words to understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills.

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Cuban children in the city of Trinidad wait outside their school for classes to begin. More than 75 percent of Cubans live in urban areas, according to data from the World Bank.

conquistador— a leader in the 16th-century Spanish conquests in the Americas. genetics— the scientific study of the way offspring inherit biological traits from their parents. indentured— bound to work for an employer for a specified period of time and under specified conditions. indigenous— native to a particular area. Words to Understand in This Chapter

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A Unique Mix T odo mezclado —”all mixed.” That’s the way the poet Nicolás Guillén described the profound interconnection of blacks and whites in his native Cuba. But todo mezcla- do might well describe Cuban culture more broadly. Over the course of five centuries, peoples, customs, and influences from the Caribbean, Europe, Africa, and Asia became all mixed in Cuba. The result is a unique and vibrant blend. The Taíno and the Spanish Before the arrival of Europeans, much of Cuba—the largest island in the Caribbean—was occupied by an indigenous peo- ple called the Taíno. The Taíno hunted, fished, and cultivated crops such as cassava, beans, and corn. They lived in villages ruled by chieftains known as a caciques. It’s estimated that

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Cuba was home to about 60,000 Taíno at the time of the first contact with Europeans. On October 28, 1492, during his first voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus landed along the northeastern coast of Cuba. Columbus claimed the island for the king and queen of Spain, in whose service he was exploring. He called the island La Isla Juana. That name didn’t stick, however. Modifying a Taíno word (scholars today disagree on which one), the Spanish would soon begin calling the island Cuba. For nearly two decades after Columbus’s first voyage, the Spanish paid little attention to Cuba. But in 1511, the conquis- tador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar mounted an expedition from the neighboring island of Hispaniola, where a Spanish colony had been established. Over the next several years, Velázquez and the more than 300 Spanish soldiers under his command ruthlessly subjugated Cuba’s indigenous people. Along the way, Velázquez founded a number of Spanish towns and settle- ments. In Cuba, as in other Spanish colonies, the indigenous peo- ple were compelled to work for their conquerors. Under what

Did You Know? A variety of Taíno words found their way into the Spanish language. Some would later pass from Spanish into English. These words include barbacoa (barbecue), canoa (canoe), hamaca (hammock), and tabaco (tobacco).

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The Culture and People of Cuba

Christopher Columbus sailed along the coast of Cuba during his first voyage to the Americas in 1492, and landed at several places on the island during his second voyage two years later. There he encountered the Taíno people, a Native American tribe that lived on islands throughout the Caribbean.

was known as the encomienda system, the Spanish crown essentially granted certain Spaniards (called encomenderos ) the right to exact tribute—in the form of goods or labor—from the Native Americans in a specified area. In return, the holder of the grant was supposed to protect the Native Americans and to instruct them in the Christian faith. In practice, the encomien- da system amounted to little more than slavery.

A Unique Mix 9

Taíno artifacts are preserved in museums in Cuba and other Caribbean islands where this Native American tribe flourished before the arrival of the Spanish. The Taíno no longer exist as a distinct tribal population. However, because the early Spanish settlers and Native Americans often intermarried, many Cubans today have Taíno (or mestizo) ancestry.

Encomenderos in Cuba forced the Taíno people to mine gold and grow crops to feed the Spaniards. Overwork, an inability to cultivate enough food for themselves, and violence at the hands of the Spaniards took a big toll on the Taíno pop- ulation. So did diseases to which the indigenous people had no natural immunity—in particular, smallpox. By the mid-1500s, only a few hundred Taíno remained in Cuba. Nevertheless, the influence of the once-numerous people

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The Culture and People of Cuba

would endure. “The Taíno culture,” observes Dr. José Barreiro, assistant director for research at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, “permeates the culture of Cuba in a fundamental way.” In rural Cuba, for example, hous- es can still be seen that use Taíno construction techniques, such as the thatched-palm roof. Some Cubans in rural areas continue to follow Taíno herbal practices and hold Taíno-influ- enced spiritual beliefs. Cubans have received another significant inheritance from the indigenous people. Many early Spanish settlers took Taíno wives. The mixed-race offspring of these unions were called mestizos . Today, even Cubans who consider themselves blanco (white) are likely to have substantial Native American ances- try, according to genetic studies. Slavery on the Island The decimation of Cuba’s indigenous population left the Spanish without a supply of forced labor to work their mines and plantations. They turned to African slaves. The first record of slavery in Cuba dates to 1513. That year, the Spanish crown granted an official’s request to transport four enslaved Africans from Hispaniola to Cuba. Seven years later, in 1520, about 300 slaves were brought to Cuba to mine gold. Over the next two centuries, the number of enslaved blacks on the island increased at a modest rate. That paralleled the rel- atively low levels of immigration from Spain. By 1608, Cuba was home to only about 20,000 people in all. By 1700, the island’s population had increased to just 50,000. Half of these

A Unique Mix 11

people lived in or around the capital city of Havana, on the northeast coast of the island. Havana was the staging area for the treasure fleets that shipped gold and silver to Spain from the Spanish colonies in the New World. Cuba itself didn’t produce much in the way of trade goods. That minimized the demand for slaves as well as the influx of Spaniards. Cuba’s limited reserves of gold had long been exhausted. Slaves did toil in copper mines in the southeastern part of the island, near the city of Santiago de Cuba. They also worked on sugarcane plantations. Although the harvesting of sugarcane required a great deal of labor, the crop was not yet widely cultivated in Cuba. This was largely because of Spain’s policy of monopolizing trade with its overseas colonies. The colonies were legally permitted to export goods only to Spain (and were required to get all imports from Spain). International developments, beginning in the latter half of the 1700s, brought major changes to Cuba. Slavery on the island expanded dramatically as a result. In August 1762, British forces captured Havana and effec- tively took control of Cuba. Great Britain and France had been fighting a wide-ranging conflict called the Seven Years’ War. Spain had entered the war on the side of France in January 1762. The British freed slaves who had risen up and fought against Spanish forces during the battle of Havana. But, seeing the commercial potential of Cuban sugar, the British also brought up to 10,000 slaves from West Africa to Cuba in just one year. Those slaves were to provide the labor for greatly enlarged plantations run by British colonists.

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The Culture and People of Cuba

This watercolor image created in 1595 shows African slaves processing sugarcane on a Spanish plantation in the Caribbean.

However, British control of Cuba didn’t last long. Great Britain returned the island to Spain under the 1763 treaty that ended the Seven Years’ War. Still, the stage had been set for the development of a plan- tation economy. Cuban sugar production took off after Spain began permitting foreign merchant vessels to trade in Cuban ports, and after political upheavals disrupted sugar production

A Unique Mix 13

This illustration from a nineteenth-century book shows the crowded conditions that West Africans faced below the decks of the slave ships that carried them to Cuba. Most of the African-American slaves brought to Cuba arrived during the nineteenth century.

in other areas. Sugar made Cuban planters extremely wealthy, and they clamored for more and more slave labor to work their expanding plantations. About 85 percent of all the slaves ever brought to Cuba—estimated at up to 1.3 million—arrived after 1800. The enslaved people represented a wide array of African groups. There were Yoruba from what are today Benin and Nigeria. There were Igbo from Biafra. There were Mandinka from Sierra Leone, Bantu from Angola, and Akan from Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. These and other groups retained major ele-

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The Culture and People of Cuba