Cuba

Cuba is a communist country in the Caribbean Sea, 90 miles from Key West, Florida. Many Cubans live in Florida because they or their parents have fled the government of Fidel Castro, after having their lives threatened and wealth seized during and after the Cuban Revolution.

Cuba has diplomatic relations with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, with which it also shares a program whereby Venezuelan oil produced by PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil company, is traded for the assistance of Cuban doctors in Venezuela and elsewhere. This "mission" is known as Mission Barrio Adentro, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez can be occasionally seen on the program Álo Presidente visiting clinics where the Cuban doctors work. Doctors working for the Cuban government were some of the first on the scene to assist victims of the earthquake in Haiti.

In 2018, Cuba began working on a new constitution. It was originally going to enshrine LBGT rights in constitutional law, but this was changed after protests from conservative Christians.

Culture

Cuban cuisine, including Cubano sandwiches and other dishes, is popular in Florida and elsewhere around the United States.

Havana cigars, among the finest in the world, are named after the capital city of Cuba, Havana.

Cuban missile crisis

The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 pitted the United States against the former Soviet Union. Reacting to the deployment by President John F. Kennedy of American missiles in Italy and, especially, Turkey, Nikita Khruschev sent ships to the Soviet ally Cubs loaded with missiles. Because Cuba is only 90 miles from the U.S. mainland, this mounted to a security threat and an international crisis was created. America created a blockade of Cuba in response.

Although Kennedy took credit for forcing the Soviets to remove the missiles, it was in fact his secretive removal of American missiles from Turkey, basically a defeat of foreign policy, which led Khrushchev to remove the Soviet missiles from Cuba, ending the crisis.