The
city of Havana is the capitol of Cuba,
a large island nation to the south of
the State of Florida. With a population
of just over 2.1 million it is the largest
city in the Caribbean. Havana came to
rest where it is in the year 1519, and
was originally used as a trading post.
It became the capital of “the Spanish
Colony of Cuba” in 1607, and quickly
became the main port of the Spanish colonies
in the New World.
Havana has been an interesting place for
a long time. It was burnt to the ground
three times by pirates and looted of its
treasures more than once. The city was
seized by the British, and then exchanged
for Florida in 1762. As the 20th century
dawned it became a haven for rum runners
and hustlers. Anyone who had made too
many mistakes on the mainland could move
to Cuba and start their business all over
again. This was illustrated perfectly
when its tourism and casino industry was
bought up and enlivened by the Mafia in
the 1950s.
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The
dictatorship that ruled the island would
let things go for a little cash, and even
today there are stories that come out
of 1950s Havana that shatter America’s
nostalgic vision of their glittering 1950s
citizen. Anything could be bought for
a price, and that’s what many people
form states like Florida and Texas found
appealing.
All of that ended when Fidel Castro and
his communist party took over the country
in 1959. While Havana preserves a wealth
of Spanish Colonial architecture and is
a UNESCO World Heritage Site it is not
the place that it once was, which to many
is a good thing. Cuba is still attractive
to tourists, and many people go there
to try to see what it would have been
like to live there in ages past.
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