4 Jan 2017

Cuba's history – Columbus to Castro

I just completed a minor project: my version of the early history of Cuba, from 1492 to 1959, which is essentially from Columbus to Castro. I was writing an abridged account but, nonetheless, it ended up being close to 4,000 words. Then I started sorting photos. 

I'd collected quite a few of my own relevant photographs during my years of touring Cuba but I also wanted some interesting historical images, so I rifled through Internet archives. It was a challenge to keep my selections to a manageable quantity! I ended up with nine text pages, plus nine photo pages. Each photo page is a collage of images and, aside from the maps page, all of the full-color photos are mine; the black-and-whites are historic images that were captured from various virtual sources. 

I hope you will enjoy my work. Here's a link to the post on my Cubana de Corazón blog...
http://cubanacorazon.blogspot.ca/2017/01/cubas-early-history-from-columbus-to.html

And, just to entice you to click and look, here's a snippet of the opening text and the first page of historic photos ...


An early history of Cuba – from Columbus to Castro – and how I fell in love with a country and its people

By Jenny Cressman

In January of 1959, Fidel Castro and his crew of rag-tag rebels marched into Havana, Cuba’s capitol, and declared triumph for their revolutionary forces. Nine months later, I was born. I don’t think my parents were celebrating Castro’s victory but the significance of that year gave me something in common with the controversial little country long before it was on my personal radar.

Before I tell you how my affection for Cuba developed, let me first give you an overview of the historical highpoints of this small archipelago during a crucial time in its development. Let’s start with its so-called discovery....