Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, 1 is a sovereign island country of the Caribbean, settled in an archipelago of the Caribbean Sea. The territory is organized in fifteen provinces and a special municipality with Havana as capital and more populated city.

It is one of the thirteen independent states that make up the Insular America, the Antilles or Islands of the Caribbean Sea, and one of the thirty-five of the American continent. The island of Cuba has an orogenic origin. The Isla de la Juventud archipelago and more than a thousand cays or small islands that surround them complete the archipelago: Cayo Coco, Cayo Guillermo, Cayo Largo del Sur and Cayo Jutías, among others. Colinda to the north, with the US state of Florida and the Bahamas, the west with Mexico and the south with the Cayman Islands and Jamaica. To the southeast of Cuba, is the island of Hispaniola.

It is located in the extreme northwest of the Antilles, bordering on the north by the Atlantic Ocean, which separates it from the United States and the Bahamas, to the east with the Pass of the Winds, which separates it from Haiti, to the south with the Caribbean Sea and northwest with the Gulf of Mexico. With 11 616 000 inhabitants in 2017, it is the most populous country in the Antilles, with 110 860 km², the most extensive, and with 102.7 hab / km², the third less densely populated, ahead of Dominica and the Bahamas. Together with Hispaniola, Jamaica and Puerto Rico, it is one of the four Greater Antilles, being the largest island in the region.

Before the period of the Spanish colonization of America initiated in Century XVI, the present Cuban territory was inhabited by diverse Amerindian towns. Cuba remained as a Spanish colony until 1869, and as a Spanish province until the Spanish-American War of 1898, unleashed from the intervention of the United States in the Cuban War of Independence. The American triumph led to de facto nominal independence as a US protectorate in 1902. During the first half of the twentieth century, Cuba tried to strengthen its democratic system, but after strong social conflicts and political tensions, there was a coup d'état in 1952, that gave rise to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

Batista was overthrown by the 26th of July Movement led by Fidel Castro during the Cuban Revolution in 1959, with Castro becoming Prime Minister, head of government. In 1965, was founded the Communist Party of Cuba, that governs the country until the present time. This was a point of high conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, within the framework of the Cold War, to the point of leading both nations to the brink of nuclear war during the development of the 1962 Missile Crisis.

The country is a Marxist-Leninist state with a single-party political system governed by the Communist Party of Cuba (CCP), whose role is covered by the Constitution. It is a developing nation that adopts for itself a planned economy, whose main activities are exports of sugar, tobacco, coffee, pharmaceuticals and specialized professionals, mainly in medicine, informatics, agricultural sciences and biotechnology. It ranks 67th in the Human Development Index developed by the United Nations, and the fifth among Latin Americans, behind Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Panama. In 2015, Cuba had the 3rd HDI in Latin America.8 According to 2006 UN data, it was the only country in the world that fulfilled the two criteria that, for WWF, mean the existence of sustainable development: development high human (HDI 0.8) and sustainable ecological footprint (footprint <1.8 ha / p) .9