Cuba 12th Grade History Final Exam cheat sheet

Indigenous groups documented at contact include the Guanahatabey (western Cuba, archaic hunting/gathering), the Ciboney (central/western, fisher-gatherers), and the Taíno (eastern/central, agriculture based on yuca/cassava, bohío housing, and batey ball courts).

Diego Velázquez began the Spanish conquest in 1511; Hatuey, a Taíno leader who resisted, was captured and burned at Yara (1512) - a symbol of early resistance later invoked by independence thinkers.

Encomienda and later repartimiento forced indigenous labor; demographic collapse from violence, forced labor, and disease led to African slave importation from the early 16th century.

Havana became the fortified hub of the Spanish fleet system (flotas) carrying silver from the Americas; the Castillo de la Real Fuerza, El Morro, and La Cabaña reflect the strategic role of the port.

The 1762–1763 British occupation of Havana (Seven Years' War) opened trade briefly and revealed Spain's defensive weakness; the Treaty of Paris returned Cuba to Spain in exchange for Florida.

Sugar and slavery expanded sharply in the late 18th and 19th centuries; the 1791 Haitian Revolution pushed French planters and capital toward Cuba, accelerating the sugar boom.

Key abolition milestones: the 1817 treaty with Britain against the slave trade, the 1845 Ley de Caminos (penal labor), the 1868 Moret Law (freeing newborns and the elderly), and full abolition in 1886.

Ten Years' War (1868–1878) began with Carlos Manuel de Céspedes' Grito de Yara and the freeing of his slaves at La Demajagua; it ended with the Pacto del Zanjón, which did not achieve independence.

José Martí founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PRC, 1892) and organized the 1895 war; he died at Dos Ríos on 19 May 1895. The war's outcome was shaped by US intervention in 1898 and the Treaty of Paris.

The Republic was proclaimed on 20 May 1902 with Tomás Estrada Palma as first president; the Platt Amendment (1901) was embedded in the 1901 Constitution, granting the US the right to intervene and to lease naval bases (Guantánamo).

The 1906–1909 second US occupation followed the August 1906 uprising (guerrilla revolt against Estrada Palma's reelection); Charles Magoon governed as provisional governor.

The 1933 Revolution: the overthrow of Gerardo Machado (August 1933) and the 'Revolución de los Sargentos' (4 September 1933) brought a provisional government led by Ramón Grau San Martín with Fulgencio Batista as army chief.

The 1940 Constitution, drafted under Grau's and Batista's influence, was among the most progressive of its era (labor rights, land, education); Batista served as elected president 1940–1944.

The Auténtico governments of Grau (1944–1948) and Carlos Prío Socarrás (1948–1952) are associated with corruption and gangsterismo (armed political gangs), eroding faith in electoral politics.

Batista's coup of 10 March 1952 ended constitutional rule; the 1953 Moncada attack (26 July) and the 1956 Granma landing (2 December) opened the insurrectionary phase.

The 26th of July Movement (M-26-7) combined urban clandestine action (Frank País, Haydée Santamaría) with the Sierra Maestra guerrilla foco; the March 1958 general strike failed, but the guerrilla offensive succeeded.

US arms embargo (March 1958) and Batista's flight on 1 January 1959 ended the dictatorship; the national question centered on sovereignty, the Platt legacy, and dependence on sugar and US markets.

Economic structure: monoculture sugar plus tourism and US investment; chronic unemployment (temporada muerta), rural poverty, and limited industrialization shaped the social agenda of the 1959 revolution.

1959: Agrarian Reform Law (17 May) created INRA and expropriated large estates; the Urban Reform Law (October 1960) eliminated private rental housing.

1960–1961 radicalization: nationalization of US and private enterprises (1960), Bay of Pigs invasion defeated at Playa Girón (April 1961), and the declaration of the socialist character of the revolution (16 April 1961).

The 1961 Literacy Campaign (Alfabetización) mobilized over 100,000 brigadistas and reduced illiteracy sharply; it is a founding myth of revolutionary education policy.

October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: US discovery of Soviet missiles, Kennedy's quarantine, and the withdrawal deal (with the secret Turkey missile removal); Cuba was excluded from the final US-Soviet understanding.

1960s institutions: CDRs (1960), FMC (1960), ANAP (1961), and the PCC founded in 1965 (First Congress 1975); the 1976 Constitution established the Organs of People's Power (OPP).

The 1970 zafra (10-million-ton sugar harvest) fell short (~8.5 million tons), marking the end of the moral-economy phase and a turn toward Soviet-style economic management.

1972 Cuba joined COMECON (CAME); the 1975–1988 internationalist missions in Angola (Operation Carlota) and Ethiopia deepened Soviet-Cuban ties.

The 1980 Mariel boatlift: economic discontent, the Período Especial precursor, and the Cuban government's decision to allow emigration from Mariel harbor.

1986 Rectificación de errores y tendencias negativas: campaign against corruption and market mechanisms, prefiguring the later Período Especial debates.

The Período Especial en Tiempo de Paz was declared in 1990 after COMECON collapse; GDP fell roughly 35% by 1993, with severe shortages of fuel, food, and fertilizer.

Key responses: legalization of the US dollar (1993), opening of paladares and self-employment (1993–1995), and the 1995 Foreign Investment Law (Ley 77).

The 1992 Torricelli Act and 1996 Helms-Burton Act tightened the US embargo; Helms-Burton codified the embargo into law and allowed suits against foreign investors in expropriated property.

The 1990s also saw the Varela Project (2002 petition for political reform), the 2003 crackdown on dissidents ('Black Spring'), and the 2006 transfer of power from Fidel to Raúl Castro (formalized 2008).

Raúl Castro's reforms (2008–2018): lifting of some restrictions, expansion of cuentapropismo, 2011 PCC Congress approving 'Lineamientos' (economic guidelines), and the 2014 US-Cuba rapprochement (December 17).

2019 Constitution: created the office of President of the Republic, recognized private property and foreign investment, and established municipal/provincial structures; Miguel Díaz-Canel became president in 2019.

2019–2021: elimination of the dual currency (CUC) in 2021, COVID-19 crisis, and the July 11, 2021 protests - the largest in decades - followed by government crackdown.

External relations: re-establishment of US diplomatic relations (2015), reopening of embassies, and the 2017 Trump rollback; the 2022 family remittance and travel restrictions continue to shape migration.

Migration and economy: 2022–2024 emigration surge, dollarization pressures, blackouts (apagones), and the 2024 approval of some private micro, small and medium enterprises (mipymes).

Chronology rule: place events on a timeline anchored by 1492, 1511, 1868, 1878, 1886, 1895, 1898, 1902, 1933, 1952, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1975, 1990, 2008, 2019.

Causation framework: distinguish long-term structures (sugar monoculture, slavery, colonial dependence) from medium-term conjunctures (wars, US policy) and short-term triggers (assassinations, coups, harvest failures).

Source analysis: identify authorship, date, audience, purpose, and bias; distinguish primary (speeches, laws, letters, photographs) from secondary (histories, textbooks) sources.

Corroboration: compare at least two independent sources before asserting a factual claim; note where sources conflict (e.g., casualty figures, zafra totals).

Periodization: justify any period boundary (e.g., 1959–1961 as radicalization) with evidence rather than accepting textbook labels.

Argumentation: a historical claim needs a thesis, evidence, and a counterargument; avoid presentism (judging the past by today's norms) and anachronism.

Continuity vs. change: identify what persisted across 1898, 1933, 1959 (e.g., sugar dependence, caudillismo, US-Cuba asymmetry) versus what changed.

Historiographical debate: the 'Black Legend' vs. revisionist readings of Spanish colonialism; nationalist vs. critical readings of the 1959 revolution; the 'special period' as rupture or continuity.

Fernando Ortiz coined 'transculturación' (1940) to describe the mutual transformation of cultures in Cuba; his Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (1940) is a foundational text.

José Martí's 'Nuestra América' (1891) and 'Versos sencillos' (1891) shaped a Latin Americanist, anti-imperialist identity; 'Guantanamera' uses verses from Versos sencillos.

Nicolás Guillén's 'Motivos de son' (1930) and 'Sóngoro cosongo' (1931) brought Afro-Cuban poetics into the national canon; the 'negrismo' movement paralleled the Harlem Renaissance.

Alejo Carpentier's 'lo real maravilloso' (prologue to El reino de este mundo, 1949) theorized a distinctively Latin American marvelous realism, distinct from European surrealism.

Music and dance: son, rumba, mambo, cha-cha-chá, and later timba and reguetón are markers of national identity; the 1961 'Palabras a los intelectuales' set the cultural policy line ('dentro de la Revolución, todo; contra la Revolución, nada').

Race and nation: the 1912 'Guerrita de razas' (Partido Independiente de Color massacre) and the 1959 revolution's claim to have solved racism are central to debates on racial inequality.

Religion: syncretic Santería/Regla de Ocha, Catholicism, and Abakuá; the 1992 constitutional reform ended the PCC's atheist character and allowed believers to join.

Historiography: the 'revisionist' school (e.g., Herminio Portell Vilá, later historians) versus the official PCC-aligned narrative; the 1990s 'new Cuban history' emphasized social history and slavery studies.

Symbols: the flag (1849, Narciso López), the coat of arms, 'La Bayamesa' (1868, Perucho Figueredo), and the Palma Real as national tree; the 1869 Guáimaro Constitution first defined the nation as independent.