Introduced in 1866 by a group of Cuban students who had studied in American universities, the first team was called “Habana.” Leopoldo de Sola was the first league president, Antonio P. Utrera, secretary, and Alfredo Maruri, treasurer. The first official championship was held in 1878 between the teams “Habana,” “Almendares,” and “Matanzas.” “Habana” won the …
These have been: [Of the República en armas] Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y del Castillo (October 10, 1868 – October 27,1873) Salvador Cisneros Betancourt (October 1873- June 1875) Juan Bautista Spotorno (June 29, 1875 – March 29, 1876) Tomás Estrada Palma (March 29, 1876 – mid 1876) Francisco Vicente Aguilera (1876 – February 12, 1877) …
Religious toleration was an innovation of the 1762-1763 British occupation but had no immediate consequences. Opposed to both Cuba’s established Roman Catholic Church and to the rationalism (in the form of Freemasonry) that was challenging it, Protestantism was introduced into the island by returned émigrés from the United States in 1883, but it remained insignificant …
The Spanish empire in the Americas was carefully regulated to create societies subservient to the Spanish Crown. Church establishment, the patronato real, meant that religious and political affairs were never clearly separated. In Cuba, however, lack of indigenous support restricted the Church to its primary role, to advise and assist the governor, and it did not …
Six thousand American troops participated in the British occupation of Havana in 1762-3, but the island was exchanged for Florida at the peace treaty of 1763. The independent United Stated flirted with the idea of annexing Cuba from the time of Thomas Jefferson’s’ administration. In the 1840s and 1850s, US leaders saw Cuba’s strategic importance …
Indians reached pre-Columbian Cuba in three waves of settlers, followed by the arrival of the Caribs, whose settlement was aborted by the coming of the Spaniards. The initial Spanish population was soon depleted by emigration to new conquests, particularly Mexico. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was augmented by fugitives from the foreign occupation of other …
Apart from the loss of much of its early population to the conquests of Mexico, the Spanish Main, and Florida, and the departure of occasional wealthy Cubans pursuing business opportunities in the United Sates, Cuba’s first population exodus was the movement of cigar workers to Tampa, Ocala, Jacksonville, and Key West in the 1850s. The …
The battleship sent to Key West in 1898 as a symbol of a strong United States naval force ready to counter any anti-US conspiracies in Havana. With Spanish approval, it arrived in Havana on January 25, 1898, and, on the evening of February 19th, blew up in the harbor, killing 260 of the 355 crew …
The royal Tribunal del Santo Oficio was established in Spain in 1478, independent of the Papal Inquisition, to preserve the purity of the Church. As the threat from Protestantism grew in Europe, the tribunal was brought to the New World (with a court covering the Caribbean set up in Cartagena de Indias in 1610) to persecute non-Catholics, …
Spanish institution brought to the New World to deal with the Indians, groups of whom would be assigned to an encomendero entrusted with Christianizing them, with the right to their labor in return. Such Indians remained legally free, and no land title accompanied the grant. The system was much abused, and the amount of labor …
