The history of Cuba is characterized by dependence on outside powers—Spain, the US, and the USSR. The island of Cuba was inhabited by various Amerindian cultures prior to the arrival of the Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus in 1492. After his arrival on a Spanish expedition, Spain conquered Cuba and appointed Spanish governors to rule in Havana. The administrators in Cuba were subject to the Viceroy of New Spain and the local authorities in Hispaniola what is now Dominican republic. In 1762–63, Havana was briefly occupied by Great Britain, before being returned to Spain in exchange for Florida. A series of rebellions during the 19th century failed to end Spanish rule and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Cubans. However, the Spanish–American War resulted in a Spanish withdrawal from the island in 1898, and following three-and-a-half years of subsequent US military rule, Cuba gained formal independence in 1902. In the years following its independence, the Cuban republic saw significant economic development, but also political corruption and a succession of despotic leaders, culminating in the overthrow of the dictator Fulgencio Batista by the 26th of July Movement, led by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Raúl Castro, during the 1953–1959 Cuban Revolution. The new government aligned with the Soviet Union and embraced communism. Massive quantities of advanced Soviet military hardware, including batteries of surface-to-air missiles, flowed to the island, and in October 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. Cuba was officially atheist from 1962 until 1992. Following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia , Fidel Castro publicly declared Cuba's support. Castro's speech marked the start of Cuba's complete absorption into the Eastern Bloc. By the mid-1970s, little would remain of Cuba's political or economic system. During the Cold War, Cuba also supported Soviet policy in Afghanistan, Poland, Angola, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The Soviet-Cuban intervention in Angola contributed to the downfall of the apartheid regime in South Africa. The extraordinarily weak Cuban economy was solely supported by Soviet subsidies. With the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 the subsidies disappeared and Cuba was plunged into a severe economic crisis known as the Special Period that ended in 2000 when Venezuela began providing Cuba with subsidized oil. In 2019, Miguel Diaz-Canel was elected President of Cuba by the national assembly. The country has been politically and economically isolated by the United States since the Revolution, but has gradually gained access to foreign commerce and travel as efforts to normalise diplomatic relations have progressed. Domestic economic reforms are also beginning to modernize Cuba's socialist economy. Pre-Columbian History Cuba's earliest known human inhabitants colonized the island in the 4th millennium BC. The oldest known Cuban archeological site, Levisa, dates from approximately 3100 BC. A wider distribution of sites date from after 2000 BC, most notably represented by the Cayo Redondo and Guayabo Blanco cultures of western Cuba. These neolithic cultures used ground stone and shell tools and ornaments, including

• published: 13 May 2021
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