April 2015
Every since I began writing about Cuba I have been asked some darn good questions. Before getting into reading about the country here are some simple statistics. So I don’t lose you here, I have interspersed other great information throughout, but here goes the easy stuff.
The Republic of Cuba consists of one large island and several small ones situated on the northern rim of the Caribbean Sea, about 100 miles south of Florida. This means the flight is about 45 minutes to a little over one hour, depending on destination and tail winds.
Cuba is the largest country in the Caribbean, accounting for more than one-half of West Indian land area.
Pennsylvania and Cuba – Courtesy of OverlapMaps.com
The area occupied by Cuba is slightly smaller than the state of Pennsylvania.
It is separated from Florida by the Straits of Florida, from the Bahamas and Jamaica by various channels, from Haiti by the Windward Passage, and from Mexico by the Yucatán Channel and the Gulf of Mexico.
Cuba’s total coastline is 2,316 miles. While many people come to Cuba just to get a tan not all the beaches are sandy.
Everyone in this photo is Cuban, with the exception of the South African lady in the front.
Cuba is a highly ethnically diverse country. In the latest 2012 census 64.1% of Cubans listed themselves as white while minorities include mulatto and mestizo (26.6%) and black (9.3%).
While Americans are hankering to go to Cuba, the rest of the world has been visiting for sometime. Here is a breakdown of tourism from those countries in 2010
Canada 945,248
UK 174,343
Italy 112,298
Spain 104,948
Germany 93,136
France 80,470
Mexico 66,650
US 63,046 (This number is expected to be 200,000 in 2015)
Argentina 58,612
Russia 56,245
Yes Cubans are having babies, but their birth rate is very low. This could cause problems in the future, as is occurring in Italy, Greece and Japan, but as their economic system is so vitally different than the rest of the worlds only time will tell how it will affect the country.
World Birth Rates
Cuban Birth Rates
The 2012 census showed the population of Cuba as just over 11 million people, around the population of the state of Ohio.
Cuba sits in a seismic zone.
The Cayman Trough is the deepest part of the Caribbean Sea.
The eastern edge of the Cayman Trough is called the Gonâve microplate.
Pico Turquino (6467 feet) is the highest point in Cuba. It is located in the southeast part of the island, in the Sierra Maestra mountain range in Santiago de Cuba Province.
Here are books about Cuba in my library, I hesitate to recommend any particular one, as everyone’s interests are different, but I have provided a link to Amazon on each for you to explore further.
Back Channel to Cuba
Listen Yankee: Why Cuba Matters
Havana Real
Waiting for Snow in Havana
Bay of Pigs
Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba
The Other Side of Paradise
Dancing With Cuba
Castro’s Daughter
A very good website, written by the woman that wrote Havana Real is
Another worth exploring is
The hard thing about these websites is that the authors write the articles and then email them to friends in other countries for translation. Please keep that in mind when the sentences sometimes just require a re-read to get the gist.
Dear PassportandBaggage,
I am writing to ask for your permissions to use the last map (above, with Pico Turquino) in a chapter of a book I am editing entitled Postcolonialism, Indigeneity and Struggle for Food Sovereignty, to be published by Routledge in 2016.
I would be very grateful if you would respond to this email with permissions to use the map.
Many thanks,
Marisa