Since the start of the " Special Period " in 1991 ( energy shortages caused by the loss of the Soviet Union as a trading partner ), hitchhiking and carpooling have become important parts of Cuba's transportation system and society in general.

Larry Cuba's Star Wars work is based on a rear projection filming of a GRASS system running on a vector terminal.

In 1986 a " Tribunal on Cuba " was held in Paris to present testimonies by former prisoners of Cuba's penal system to the international media.

Fernando Ortiz also developed a theory of activism within Cuba's political system saying their African traits characterized the Afro-Cubans negatively and primitively.

The Cuban National Assembly Constitution and Legal Affairs Committee tabled the Varela Project citizens ' initiative and responded with a counter initiative, the petition for which collected 8. 1 million signatures, to request that Cuba's National Assembly amend the constitution to state " Socialism and the revolutionary political and social system ... are irrevocable ; and Cuba will never again return to capitalism.

In the years to follow, the revolutionary government enacted hundreds of laws and decrees with the aim of affecting basic change in Cuba's socio-economic system.

they had orders to that effect straight from President Kennedy, who thought at first, as did most others, that it was four followers of Cuba's Fidel Castro who had taken over the 707.

Pepin founded Bacardi Imports in New York City, and was named Cuba's Minister of the Treasury in 1949.

Spain also restricted Cuba's access to the slave trade, which was dominated by the British, French, and Dutch.

One of its leaders, Joaquín Infante, drafted Cuba's first constitution, declaring the island a sovereign state, presuming the rule of the countries ' wealthy, maintaining slavery as long as it was necessary for agriculture, establishing a social classification based on skin colour and declaring Catholicism the official religion.

) Among the executed was one of Cuba's greatest poets, Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés, now commonly known as " Placido ".

José Antonio Saco, one of Cuba's foremost thinkers, was expelled from Cuba.

Black unrest and British pressure to abolish slavery motivated many Creoles to advocate Cuba's annexation by the United States, where slavery was still legal.

When the Soviet Union broke up in late 1991, a major boost to Cuba's economy was lost, leaving it essentially paralyzed because of the economy's narrow basis, focused on just a few products with just a few buyers.

Over 80 % of Cuba's trade was lost and living conditions worsened.

In the 1950s, Cuba's gross domestic product ( GDP ) per capita was roughly equal to that of contemporary Italy, and significantly higher than that of countries such as Japan, although Cuba's GDP per capita was still only a sixth as large as that of the United States.

However, there are some problems with Bacardi's account, as the Spanish-American war was fought in 1898, Cuba's liberation was in 1898, and the Rough Riders left Cuba in September 1898, but Coca-Cola was not available in Cuba until 1900.

An example of this may be Cuba's role during the Cold War, in sending active combat troops to wars in Africa when it was unpalatable for the USSR to do so.

According to the 2002 census, Cuba's population was 11, 177, 743.

The Government response was to collect 8. 1 million signatures to request that Cuba's National Assembly make the Socialist Constitution untouchable.

On April 26 the following year, the new International Terminal 3 was inaugurated by Canada's ex-Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Cuba's ex-president Fidel Castro.

International Terminal 3 is the main international terminal, it was opened in 1998 by Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and Cuba's ex-president Fidel Castro, it is the largest and most modern of all terminals.

Cuba was designated as the Route 66 Mural City by the Missouri legislature in recognition of Viva Cuba's Outdoor Mural Project.

World-class trumpeter Arturo Sandoval was a shining light in Cuba's exciting jazz scene and championed by jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie as one of the greatest musicians he had ever heard.

" He thought war was necessary to achieve Cuba's freedom, despite his basic ideology of conciliation, respect, dignity, and balance.

Raul Castro's travels and contact with Soviet KGB agent Nikolai Leonov — whom he met in 1953 during a trip to the Soviet-bloc nations and again in 1955 during his exile in Mexico City — facilitated Cuba's close ties with the Soviets after the triumph of the Revolution.

While Cuba has partnered with Chinese companies to drill in the Florida Straits, no Chinese company has been involved in Cuba's oil exploration that close to the United States.

Born in the Columbia Military Encampment close to Havana in the city of Marianao where his father was a colonel, Lezama lived through some of the most turbulent times of Cuba's history, fighting against the Machado dictatorship.

Martí's distrust of North American politics had developed during the 1880s, due to the intervention threats that loomed on Mexico and Guatemala, and indirectly on Cuba's future.

Formell was convinced that he could capture the imagination of Cuba's younger generation by infusing Revé's arrangements with elements of North American rock and roll, creating an odd new style that he called changüí 68.

In 1662, English admiral and pirate Christopher Myngs captured and briefly occupied Santiago de Cuba on the eastern part of the island, in an effort to open up Cuba's protected trade with neighbouring Jamaica.

This situation came to an end on 3 June 2009, when foreign ministers assembled in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for the OAS's 39th General Assembly, passed a vote to lift Cuba's suspension from the OAS.

During those trips, Humboldt collected statistical information on Cuba's population, production, technology and trade, and with Arango, made suggestions for enhancing them.

Research activities are concerned with a wide range of topics, including the challenges that a changing world economy poses for Latin America, the impact of organized crime on democratic institutions and economic prosperity, trade and investment policies, strategies to tackle poverty and inequality, combating climate change, and Cuba's political transition.

Román de la Campa's Cuba on My Mind: Journeys to a Severed Nation does this by exploring Cuba's two capitals, Havana and Miami, and the hybrid position of the " one-and-half-generation " as well as by using the Elián González affair as a cipher for understanding how adults in both countries used children to achieve the broader ideological goals of the Cold War and how those goals are faring at the so-called " end of history ".

Trying to become Cuba's first world boxing champion ever on that night, Chocolate lost a 15 round decision.

Then, on July 15, his dream of becoming Cuba's first world boxing champion finally came true, as he knocked out the defending world Junior Lightweight champion Benny Bass in seven rounds to take the world title.

Ortiz also referred to the devastating impact of Spanish colonialism on Cuba's indigenous peoples as a " failed transculturation.

There, he resigned signing the Pact of Zanjón which ended the Cuban Ten Years ' War, but had no effect on Cuba's status as a colony.

He specified his plans for the future Cuban Republic, a multi-class and multi-racial democratic republic based on universal suffrage, with an egalitarian economic base to develop fully Cuba's productive resources and an equitable distribution of land among citizens, with enlightened and virtuous politicians.

On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro proclaimed the victory of the Cuban Revolution from a balcony on Santiago de Cuba's city hall.

Fernando Ortiz, the first great Cuban folklorist, described Cuba's musical innovations as arising from the interplay (' transculturation ') between African slaves settled on large sugar plantations and Spaniards or Canary Islanders who grew tobacco on small farms.

Starting off with imported Spanish content ( List of zarzuela composers ), it developed into a running commentary on Cuba's social and political events and problems.

In the 1900s, the area south of 67th Street was heavily populated by African-Americans and supposedly gained its nickname of " San Juan Hill " in commemoration of African-American soldiers who were a major part of the assault on Cuba's San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War.

Many of the policies of this era were influenced by Cuba's heavy reliance on the support of the USSR in political and economic spheres.

China, which had usually vetoed such resolutions authorising action against a state, abstained in an attempt to ease sanctions placed on it after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, and Cuba's position was contradictory as it had voted for or abstained on previous resolutions relating to Iraq, but did not support Resolution 678.