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Travel Cuba People |
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Cuba People |
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The Guanatajabey Amerindians are the indigenous
inhabitants of Cuba. In 1000 before Christ there
were 100,000 of them on the island. However, with
the arrival of Europeans on their land, the people
were decimated by the small pox a disease brought by
the travellers having no immunity towards it. These
nations were hunters, gatherers, farmers and
fishermen. They planted ‘cohiba’ tobacco but there
is no presence of pottery in their cultures. The
Guanatajabeys were adventurous people; they migrated
from South of America. Seafarers, they travelled
from the Amazon Basin to settle in Cuba. It is sad
that they become extinct before they could unveil
the secrets of their society. |
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‘Cibo’ means ‘precious stones’ or ‘pearls’ in
Amerindian language and ‘hey’, people. Therefore,
the Ciboneys are the precious people or people of
great value. The Ciboneys or Siboneys were lived in
the Antilles and they were thinned out in the island
by the Tainos. Today, 253 families of Ciboneys
descent live in Florida. |
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‘Taino’ means nice, good or
noble. The Tainos are the indigenous inhabitants of
Cuba and are related to the Avawakan people of the
Amazon Basin. The Tainos had a stratified society,
the ‘nabonias’ (commoners) and the ‘nitainos’
nobles. They were governed by a chief, a male or a
female named the ‘cacique’. The latter ruled their
community and took advice from the priest or
‘bohique’ who had a special relationship with the
gods. The Taino established a matrilineal society.
In case of death, the inheritance goes to the first
child of the sister. This nation were also agrarian,
they lived in groups cultivating around their
habitations many vegetables like peppers,
calabashes, peanuts, fruits and cotton and they also
eat fish, meat, cassava or yucca and sweet potato or
batata . They even reared animals. However, the
Taino like the Guanatajabeys population decreased
drastically by the diseases namely smallpox and
measles introduced by the Europeans on their land
their forced assimilation to the European culture
and traditions; for example by working in the
tobacco or sugar cane plantations in Cuba. |
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The Spaniards to colonise Cuba
arrived in the year 1511 on an expedition of Diego
Velazquez de Cuellar. They came without women and
took as wives the Taino women and had children of
their mixed marriages, the ‘mestizo’. The Spanish
colons exploited the gold and nickel mines present
in the island. The indigenous population, unable to
adapt to their working and living conditions
decreased to become only 100. They then brought
slaves from Africa and when the gold mine was no
longer profitable the colons were encouraged by the
Spanish Empire to develop agriculture. They planted
sugar cane and tobacco. In 1847, the Colons hired
Chinese workers on an eight year contract to work in
the sugar cane fields with the African slaves. Some
of them returned to China, others remained and
opened with their savings shops. In the 1920’s, the
Chinese which made up 1% of the Cuban population
today, migrated to Cuba fleeing the political
revolution.
The Haitians too came to settle in Cuba in the years
1791 to 1804 due to the revolution in St- Domingue
now Haiti, they brought with them their slaves and
knowledge in sugar and tobacco plantation that
boosted the Cuban economy.
Today the descendants of the Spanish Colons the
African slaves the Chinese, the Haitians as well as
the Tainos make up the Cuban Nation. |
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