Cuban Institutions and Groups

A clandestine revolutionary organization founded in 1934 by Antonio Guiteras Holmes, interior minister in the Grau San Martín administration, which had just been overthrown by Fulgencio Batista.  The organization adopted urban violence as a tactic to cripple the government of Batista’s nominee, Carlos Mendieta, and was particularly involved in the General Strike of 1935. Jaime […]

An opposition movement against President Alfredo Zayas consisting of veterans of the wars of Cuba’s independence struggle.  Beginning as a protest for veterans’ pensions, they held an assembly in 1923.  Worried about the large size of the assembly, Zayas ordered the pensions to be paid.  However, another assembly, held the same year, captured the public’s

Founded by Carlos Baliño in the early 1920s, the Communist Association of Havana was one of the various communist groups that sprang up in Cuba in the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution, and played a key role in organizing the unifying Communist Congress of 1925.

The “Cuban Assembly” composed of delegates elected by 31 corps of the Army of Liberation and summoned by the Council of Government to meet at Santa Cruz del Sur on October 14, 1898.  After President Masó had charged the assembly with ensuring Cuban independence, the paying off of the army and getting the country back

Cuban sentiment in favor of the abolition of slavery first became significant in the 1850s.  Many of the larger planters came to realize the economic disadvantages of slavery at a time of increasing mechanization.  In the late 1840s and 1850s a number of Chinese and Yucatán Indians arrived in Cuba to work in the sugar

Organized in the early 1900s by a group of radical Blacks unhappy with their lack of political opportunities, the “Independent Color Association” developed into a political party during the second United States intervention.  Despite its appeal to the racial consciousness of the Blacks, the party did poorly in the 1908 elections, a fiasco that increased

Weekly four-page newspaper that succeeded the original Gaceta de la Habana from October 24, 1790.  Founded by Governor Luis de las Casas, and edited by Diego de la Barrera, its contributors included Arango y Parreño, Tomás Romay, Félix Varela, and José A. Caballero.  In 1791 it became biweekly and in 1793 became Cuba’s first daily

Founded in 1878 as the Partido Liberal, it advocated home rule for Cuba (Autonomismo) and in 1881 became known as the Partido Liberal Autonomista.  Its program also included the abolition of slavery, white immigration, and economic liberalization. By 1892, with no changes forthcoming from Spain, disillusionment and frustration gripped the party, many of whose members

The Cuban Revolutionary Party was conceived from the set of resolutions or bases that evolved out of an exile meeting led by Jose Martí in Key West on January 5, 1892.  These bases represented a pragmatic approach to Cuba’s situation, appealed to all classes and races, and discussed Cuba as a factor in the international

The reform commission, created by a Spanish royal decree of November 25, 1865, of 12 Creole and 4 Spanish-born members, elected March 25, 1866, met in Madrid, adopting reforms, which included representation in the Cortes, equality of access to civil employment, freedom from arbitrary arrest and search, and revised civil and criminal codes.  The commissioners