Cuba has historically—before and during communist rule—performed better than other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean on several socioeconomic indicators, such as literacy, infant mortality, and life expectancy. Raúl retired as president of the Council of State in 2018, and Miguel Díaz-Canel was elected president by the National Assembly following parliamentary elections. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Cuba faced a severe economic downturn in the 1990s, known as the Special Period. During the 1970s through the late 1980s, Cuba intervened in numerous conflicts in support of anti-colonial and Marxist governments or movements across Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. The country under Castro was a point of contention during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into nuclear war.

  • On 24 February, the National Assembly elected his brother Raúl Castro as president.
  • The country is divided into 15 provinces and one special municipality (Isla de la Juventud).
  • After finishing his term in 1944, Batista lived in Florida, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952.
  • Cuba has a universal health care system that provides free medical treatment to all Cuban citizens, although challenges include low salaries for doctors, poor facilities, poor provision of equipment, and the frequent absence of essential drugs.
  • After the 1959 revolution, the government started a national literacy campaign, offered free education to all and established rigorous sports, ballet, and music programs.
  • In 2013 Cuba ended the requirement established in 1961 that any citizens who wished to travel abroad were required to obtain an expensive government permit and a letter of invitation.

Geography of Cuba

Between the 18th and early 20th century, large waves of Canarian, Catalan, Andalusian, Galician, and other Spanish people immigrated to Cuba. Afro-Cubans are descended primarily from the Yoruba people, Bantu people from the Congo basin, Kalabari tribe and Arará from the Dahomey, as well as several thousand North African refugees, most notably the Sahrawi Arabs of Western Sahara. Many are descendants of farm laborers brought to the island by Spanish and American contractors during the 19th and early 20th century. Asians make up about 1% of the population and are largely of Chinese ancestry, followed by Japanese and Filipino.

Cuba

In 2024, it was reported that 8.19 million Cuban people have Internet access. The government of Cuba provides an online encyclopedia website called EcuRed that operates in a “wiki” format. Concert dance is supported by the government and includes internationally renowned companies such as the Ballet Nacional de Cuba. Other traditional Cuban instruments are of African origin, Taíno origin, or both, such as the maracas, güiro, marímbula and various wooden drums including the mayohuacán. The Tres was invented in Cuba from Spanish cordophone instruments models (the instrument is actually a fusion of elements from the Spanish guitar and lute). However, some Cuban writers continue living and writing in Cuba, including Nancy Morejón.
As of 2009,update it has continued to call regularly for social and economic reform, along with the unconditional release of all political prisoners. In 2003, the EU accused the Cuban government of “continuing flagrant violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms”. While some argue it has been “extraordinarily porous” and is not the primary cause of Cuba’s economic hardships, others see it as a pressure mechanism aimed at driving change in the Cuban government. The expedition failed, but a prominent monument to its members was erected in their memory in Santo Domingo by the Dominican government, and they feature prominently at the country’s Memorial Museum of the Resistance.

  • On balance, during the period 1933–1940, Cuba suffered from fragile political structures, with three presidents in two years (1935–1936) and in the militaristic and repressive policies of Batista as head of the army.
  • The economic focus on sugar production involved international volunteers and the mobilization of workers from all sectors of the economy.
  • All these models can understand and generate human-like answers to text prompts, because they’ve been trained on huge amounts of data so they can create responses that make it seem like a friendly and intelligent robot.
  • In the 2020s Cuba is undergoing its most severe socioeconomic crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union, leading to a record number of Cubans fleeing the island.
  • He then aligned with landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.
  • By 4 February, the death toll had increased to six, with 11 people still in critical condition.

Cuba’s “Special Period” saw the country relying heavily on foreign tourism and the earnings of nationals working abroad. This signifies a 13% loss of population since 2012, when the Cuban population peaked at 11.2 million. On 9 September 1994, the U.S. and Cuban governments agreed that the U.S. would grant at least 20,000 visas annually in exchange for Cuba’s pledge to prevent further unlawful departures on boats. Those who left the country typically did so by sea, in small boats and fragile rafts. As of 2015, the foreign-born population in Cuba was 13,336 inhabitants per the World Bank data.

Images

The model can also generate new images based on existing ones provided in the prompt. The integration used ChatGPT to write prompts for DALL-E guided by conversations with users. In October 2023, OpenAI’s image https://www.betybets.nl/ generation model DALL-E 3 was integrated into ChatGPT. At launch, OpenAI included more than 3 million GPTs created by GPT Builder users in the GPT Store.

Does ChatGPT have an app?

This meant that Cuba, which had sold most of its products to the Soviet Union, had no money coming into the country. Some Cubans who did not like the government and stayed were put in jail. Disagreeing with the Cuban government and Fidel Castro in public was not allowed. However, the Cuban government began to control most of life in Cuba under the communist system.

He arrived in Santiago de Cuba on 4 November 1549 and declared the liberty of the indigenous population. Columbus claimed the island for the new Kingdom of Spain and named it Isla Juana (“John’s Island”) after John, Prince of Asturias. The earliest evidence of the Taíno people on Cuba dates to the 9th century.
It has been described as a crisis that is “threatening the stability” of Cuba, which “already has one of the hemisphere’s oldest populations”. According to Carmelo Mesa-Lago, there is widespread consensus that the policies of the revolutionary government decreased poverty until the end of the Cold War. Any firm that hires a Cuban must pay the Cuban government, which in turn pays the employee in Cuban pesos (CUP). Most of the means of production are owned and run by the government, and most of the labor force is employed by the state. Cuba was ranked 19th by the number of imprisoned journalists of any nation in 2021update according to various sources, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch. In July 2010, the unofficial Cuban Human Rights Commission said there were 167 political prisoners in Cuba, a fall from 201 at the start of the year.

If you want ChatGPT to think longer to improve the accuracy of its answers then you can select Thinking or Thinking mini from the model picker. OpenAI’s, ChatGPT-5 model can work across any combination of text, audio and images meaning many more applications for AI are now possible. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is leading the way in the generative AI revolution, quickly attracting millions of users, and promising to change the way we create and work. In the UK, a judge expressed concern about self-representing litigants wasting time by submitting documents containing significant hallucinations. In November 2025, OpenAI acknowledged that there have been “instances where our 4o model fell short in recognizing signs of delusion or emotional dependency”, and reported that it is working to improve safety.