

- Cuba
- Cuba f


- Cuba
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- The guerrilla campaign (1956-59) which started the Revolución cubana aimed to topple the corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista and free Cuba from United States economic domination. The new government of January 1959 set in motion wide-ranging social and political reforms. When Fidel Castro Ruz announced the expropriation of foreign-owned companies, the US imposed a trade embargo which has lasted into the new century. After the unsuccessful invasion by CIA-trained Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs (Playa Girón), bilateral relations worsened and Cuba sought political and economic support from the communist block. When the USSR collapsed in 1991 the Cuban economy was in ruins. Some recovery was achieved in the 1990s thanks to the growth of international tourism and new industries such as pharmaceuticals.
Cuba is criticized by the US for not adopting parliamentary democracy and the presence of a politically influential Cuban community in the United States has blocked normal relations between the countries. Castro argues that each country has the right to its own political system. In Latin America revolutionary Cuba has inspired political movements seeking to improve the lot of workers and peasants.
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- A term applied to the work of certain twentieth-century Latin American novelists, in particular the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende of Chile, the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges and Alejo Carpentier of Cuba. The common characteristic, found for example in García Márquez's Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude), is the realistic treatment of unrealistic or fantasy situations.
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- A religious cult, fusing African beliefs and Catholicism, which developed among African Yoruba slaves in Cuba. Followers believe both in a single supreme being and also in orishas, deities who each share an identity with a Christian saint and who combine a force of nature with human characteristics. Rituals involve music, dancing, sacrificial offerings, divination, and going into trances.
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- A hollow figure made of cardboard, or from a clay pot lined with colored paper. Filled with fruit, candy, toys, etc, and hung up at parties, people take turns to stand in front of them blindfolded and try to break them with a stick. They feature in Mexican posadas posada and in children's parties there, in Cuba and in Spain.


- Cuba
- Cuba f