Within the first 100 years after Christopher Columbus discovered Isla Juana (the name Columbus gave Cuba) in 1492, the Amerindian population of Cuba began to seriously decrease due to infectious diseases that the Europeans brought with them. As the Spanish developed the colony, they replaced the waning native population with imported African slaves who worked on the sugar and coffee plantations. Havana was a launching point for the annual treasure fleets headed to Spain, Mexico and Peru. There were a number of rebellions for independence over the years that the Spanish firmly suppressed. During the Spanish-American War in 1898, the US overthrew Spanish rule on the island. The Treaty of Paris was later signed which created an independent Republic of Cuba in 1902. The ensuing governments were (for the most part) dominated by corrupt politicians and the military.

With the help of the US arms embargo to the then existing (Batista) government, Fidel Castro led a rebel army to victory in 1959. What became Cuba's Communist revolution, with Soviet support, was exported throughout Latin America and Africa during the 1960s through the 1980s.

In 1961, a U.S.-backed group of Cuban exiles invaded Cuba. Planned during the Eisenhower administration, the invasion was given the go-ahead by President John Kennedy, although he refused to give U.S. air support. The landing at the Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961, was a fiasco. The invaders did not receive popular Cuban support and were easily repulsed by the Cuban military.

A Soviet attempt to install medium-range missiles in Cuba—capable of striking targets in the United States with nuclear warheads—provoked a crisis in 1962. Denouncing the Soviets for “deliberate deception,” President Kennedy promised a U.S. blockade of Cuba to stop the missile delivery. Six days later, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev ordered the missile sites dismantled and returned to the USSR in return for a U.S. pledge not to attack Cuba.
Castro’s iron rule has held the new regime together for five decades. Cuba experienced an economic downturn in 1990 (following the withdrawal of former Soviet subsidies) of some $4 billion to $6 billion annually. Cuba portrays its current difficulties as the result of the US embargo, in place since 1961. For decades, there has been frequent illegal emigration to the US. Often using nothing more substantial than homemade rafts, sometimes with assistance from alien smugglers, immigrants arrive on the US shores to find a better way of life. The US Coast Guard intercepted 2,656 individuals attempting to cross the Straits of Florida in 2007.

Because of ill health, in February 2008 Fidel Castro stepped down as president in favor of his younger brother Raul Castro. However, it is believed the Fidel still holds the real power.