Cuba

CUBA. - I. GEOGRAPHY. - The "pearl" and the largest of the Antilles (115,000 sq. km. including the neighboring islands). Elongated and narrow in shape, it extends entirely south of the tropic; its coasts are partly girded by coral reefs. Barely 1/5 of its surface is mountainous (the Sierra Maestra, in the southern part, reaches 2,600 m.); for the rest it has flat or hilly terrain. The climate is tropical-oceanic with abundant rainfall. The forests (now reduced to 1/6 of the island) have given way to cultivation: plantations of sugar cane (of which C. is the world's largest producer) and of tobacco, coffee and fruit (especially pineapples, bananas and grapefruits). Livestock raising (pigs, horses, sheep) is far from negligible. Of the many mineral resources, chromite, manganese and, to a lesser extent, copper are important. Industries are poorly developed, apart from those connected with agricultural production; commerce is almost entirely in the hands of the United States.

Of the population (5.1 million inhabitants in 1948; 45 per sq. km.) about two thirds are white, one seventh mulatto, one eighth Negro; of the 1,500 Italians, half are concentrated in the capital, La Habana (833,000 inhabitants with the suburbs in 1943), the largest of the Central American cities (5 other cities exceed 100,000 and 7 exceed 50,000 inhabitants in 1943).

Since 1898 C. has been a unitary representative republic.

Giuseppe Caraci

The island of C., discovered in 1492 by Columbus, who called it Juana, was from 1512 subjugated and colonized by the Spaniards. The first Spanish colony, Baracca, was erected as a diocese in 1518, but already in 1522 the see was transferred to Santiago de C.

Among the peaceful Indians, enslaved by the Spaniards and soon extinct, Bartolomé de Las Casas carried out his first missionary activity. From 1524 began the importation of Negro slaves, which lasted until the beginning of the 19th century, and thus a fourth of the population turned out to be people of color. In 1787 the second diocese of S. Cristóforo of Havana was erected. Following the Treaty of Basel of 1795, S. Domingo was ceded to France, and to prevent C. from continuing to depend on a metropolitan see located in non-Spanish territory, Charles IV in 1803 obtained that Santiago de C. be elevated to an archdiocese with the suffragans of S. Cristóforo of Havana and of Puerto Rico. During the emancipation from the Spanish American Empire, C. remained on the whole tranquil and the island constituted the military base for the various expeditions prepared by the Madrid government in the attempt to recover the rebellious territories. Nevertheless, the mood of the Cubans was not favorable to Spain.

In 1868 came the first attempt to escape from the sovereignty of Madrid. A civil war in fact broke out that year, which dragged on for a decade and was brought to an end in 1878 with the Treaty of Zanjon, which guaranteed the Cubans the granting of an amnesty and the beginning of political reforms. Spiritually, however, C. now considered itself independent of Spanish sovereignty: when a new revolt broke out in 1895, this, after the intervention of the United States against Spain, marked the end of Spanish rule. The island became an independent republic, but had to grant guarantees that subjected it to United States influence.

The Constitution of 1901 sanctioned the separation of State and Church. In 1903 the dioceses of Cienfuegos and Pinar del Rio were erected; in 1912 those of Matanzas and Camagüey, and in 1925 S. Cristóforo of Havana was elevated to an archdiocese with the suffragans of Matanzas and Pinar del Rio, while the sees of Camagüey and Cienfuegos remained under the metropolis of Santiago de C. Since 1935 the Holy See has been represented in Havana by an apostolic nuncio. In the Consistory of Feb. 18, 1946, Emanuele Arteaga y Betancourt, archbishop of S. Cristóforo of Havana, was invested with the cardinal's purple, a dignity then conferred for the first time on a native of the island. Recently the representation to the Holy See has been raised to the rank of embassy. The ecclesiastical circumscription comprises two metropolises with two suffragan dioceses each; for the map: v. ANTILLE.

III. SCHOOL SYSTEM OF CUBA

The Cuban Constitution provides for freedom of teaching, the right of parents to supervise the education of their children, and freedom of conscience, so that attendance at religion classes is optional; it further guarantees the right of private individuals to found schools, and therefore also of the Catholic Church. Attendance at primary school is compulsory and free and lasts 8 years. The state school is informed by the pedagogical doctrines of the Cubans José de la Luz Caballero and Wilson L. Gill, continuators of the patriotic association "Sociedad Económica de Habana" (1790), in whose spirit, integrated with the conceptions of the English associationist school, the "Ciudad Escolar" was founded.

Private schools include those of the Catholic Church, which are linked to the old traditions of Cuban culture and to the first Cuban school founded in the year 1522 under the name Scholabria. There are 180 of them and they include: the colleges of St. Augustine, of St. Anthony, and those of the Jesuits, of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, of the Marists, of the Ursulines and others.

Higher education is imparted at the Universidad de Habana, founded in 1728 by the Dominicans Los padres de S. Juan de Létan, authorized to do so by Innocent XIII on 12 Sept. 1721; it was secularized in 1842. There also exists a Catholic University of St. Thomas at Villanova, with a well-organized Catholic university center.

The education of the Catholic clergy takes place at the Seminario de los Santos Carlos y Ambrosio in Habana, where studies of philosophy and theology are completed after the preparatory studies, which can also be done at the minor seminaries in Santiago de C. (Seminario Conciliar) and in Camagüey (Seminario di S. Maria).

Stumpf Miroslav.