What is "cuba"

Cuba \Cuba\ (k[=u]"b[.a]), prop. n.

1. a country on the island of Cuba.

2. the largest island in the West Indies.

said to be from Taino (Arawakan) Cubanacan, the name of the people who occupied the island. Related: Cuban (1829), Cuban heel (1908); Cuban Missile Crisis (October 16-28, 1962).

n. 1 A country and the largest island in the Caribbean. Official name: Republic of Cuba. 2 A town in Alabama 3 A city in Illinois 4 A city in Kansas 5 A city in Missouri 6 A village in New Mexico 7 A town and village in New York 8 A town in Portugal

Cuba is a Caribbean island country.

Cuba may also refer to:

Cuba is a 1979 film directed by Richard Lester and starring Sean Connery, portraying the build-up to the 1958 Cuban Revolution.

Connery is a British mercenary who travels to Cuba, which is on the brink of revolution with the authority of dictator Fulgencio Batista steadily collapsing. Connery encounters a former lover there ( Brooke Adams), who is neglected by her Cuban husband ( Chris Sarandon). The film ends with Havana falling to Fidel Castro's revolutionaries as most of Connery's employers flee the island aboard one of the last flights out.

The same historical events were featured five years earlier in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II and would be covered again by Sidney Pollack in his 1990 film Havana, starring Robert Redford. Lester's film was perhaps the most stylish of the three, aided by its stirring Spanish locations, "with a marvelous sense of atmosphere."

Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba , is a unitary sovereign state comprising the island of Cuba as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located in the northern Caribbean where the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean meet. It is south of both the U.S. state of Florida and the Bahamas, west of Haiti, and north of Jamaica. Havana is the largest city and capital; other major cities include Santiago de Cuba and Camagüey. Cuba is the largest island in the Caribbean, with an area of , and the second-most populous after Hispaniola, with over 11 million inhabitants.

Prior to Spanish colonization in the late 15th century, Cuba was inhabited by Amerindian tribes. It remained a colony of Spain until the Spanish–American War of 1898, which led to nominal independence as a de facto United States protectorate in 1902. As a fragile republic, Cuba attempted to strengthen its democratic system, but mounting political radicalization and social strife culminated in the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1952. Further unrest and instability led to Batista's ousting in January 1959 by the July 26 Movement, which afterwards established a government under the leadership of Fidel Castro. Since 1965, the state has been governed by the Communist Party of Cuba. A point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, a nuclear war nearly broke out during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Culturally, Cuba is considered part of Latin America. It is a multiethnic country whose people, culture and customs derive from diverse origins, including the aboriginal Taíno and Ciboney peoples, the long period of Spanish colonialism, the introduction of African slaves, and a close relationship with the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

Cuba is a Marxist–Leninist one-party republic, where the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Independent observers have accused the Cuban government of numerous human rights abuses, including arbitrary imprisonment and torture. Cuba is a developing country with a planned economy that is dominated by the exports of sugar, tobacco, coffee and skilled labor. It ranks highly in some metrics of national performance, including health care and education.