Cuba

Discover Cuba

Fun Foods

Ropa vieja, Arroz con pollo, Pollo frito, Medianoche, Croquetas, Churros

Cuba is where American cars from the 1950s never died. When the US cut off trade in 1962, Cubans couldn't buy new ones. So they kept the old Chevys and Fords running with homemade parts, Russian tractor engines, and sheer stubbornness.

The Taíno people called the island home for thousands of years. They grew cassava, fished the Caribbean, and gave the island its name.

Columbus landed in 1492 and claimed everything for Spain. He wrote that it was the most beautiful land human eyes had ever seen. Within 50 years, disease and forced labor had wiped out most of the Taíno.

Spain turned Cuba into a sugar machine. They brought hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans to work the plantations. Cuba became one of the last places in the Americas to abolish slavery, finally ending it in 1886.

José Martí led the fight for independence and died in battle in 1895. The Spanish-American War finished the job in 1898. But the US occupied Cuba and kept heavy influence for decades.

Fulgencio Batista ran Cuba as a dictator friendly to American businesses and the mafia. In 1959, Fidel Castro's revolution threw him out. Castro allied with the Soviet Union and declared Cuba communist.

The world almost ended in October 1962. Soviet nuclear missiles sat on Cuban soil, pointed at America. For 13 days, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the planet to the edge of annihilation.

Today Cuba feels frozen in time but very much alive.

Old Havana is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with crumbling colonial buildings painted pink, yellow, and blue. The Malecón seawall stretches for miles where families gather at sunset. Viñales Valley grows tobacco under dramatic limestone hills called mogotes. You can tour farms where workers still roll cigars by hand.

Ropa vieja (old clothes) is shredded beef in tomato sauce that tastes better than it sounds. Moros y cristianos (Moors and Christians) is rice and black beans cooked together. Tostones are twice-fried plantains that crunch perfectly. Kids love guarapo, fresh sugarcane juice squeezed right in front of you.

Carnival in Santiago de Cuba explodes every July with music, dancing, and costumes. Baseball is the national obsession, not soccer.